The next thing that happens is more surprising. 

Actually, that's understating it. Asteroids striking plane engines, or whatever happened here, happen one time in a billion, maybe.

Wizards from other universes getting Plane Shifted into yours by a mis-cast combat spell should happen never. 

And yet here she is. Her uniform is a bit singed, and she looks like she's recently been engaged in serious physical exertion.

She has (it might be relevant) some spells prepared:

Prestidigitation, Light, Mage Hand, Detect Magic, Comprehend Languages, Feather Fall, Secluded Grimoire, Infernal Healing, Rope Trick, Resist Energy, Summon Monster 2, Greater Detect Magic, Fly, Tongues, and Haste. 

She looks around confusedly. 

She's in the aisle of a passenger airplane! It is, for someone from Golarion, not an especially familiar scene!

The "room" she finds herself in is – long, and narrow, and sort of disconcertingly tube-shaped. The floor is covered in pleasantly-textured carpet. On either side, there are rows of - weirdly shaped sofas? The aisle between them is wide enough for someone to walk comfortably through – under normal conditions, at least, which these are not, because the entire "room" is shaking and shuddering around her and there is a definite sensation of falling. 

There's a middle-aged woman staring at her! She's holding a small child in her lap. She looks incredibly confused. 

"....Tsi-imbi?" she says. 

That doesn't make any sense but there's an obvious explanation for that! She casts Tongues, and - looks for an exit, she's not exactly getting the vibe she's supposed to be here - "sorry, sorry," she says in the same language, "Uh, I got lost by accident, I can pay my way back, I didn't meant to intrude -"

Irris is really confused and would honestly be tempted to tsi-imbi again about it, except that she literally just did five seconds ago, and in the relevant situations where she is actually having a psychotic break which would be so much better than the current situation, it's both unnecessary and undignified. And in the situation where this is real, it...still won't help. 

"...I don't understand how you could possibly have gotten here by accident," she says.

Her voice is surprisingly calm, even to herself. Maybe it helps that she still has a four-year-old in her lap and part of her is instinctively focused on not scaring him.

"I - I'm sorry, I don't - actually think there's an obvious way for you to pay to get out of this."

Since, you know, Merrin is actually pretty wealthy even if Irris is far more aware of this fact than her daughter is, and even knowing that she has that resource to draw on, Irris is still not expecting to survive this. 

"...I - distracted and low on verbal processing - I am wondering if you're somehow missing more context than what I initially assumed?" 

"I'm sorry, I don't actually think there's an obvious way for you to pay to get out of this" is the politest death threat Carissa has ever heard but it's definitely a death threat.

"I don't have any context," she says tightly, looking around to see who's going to drag her off for unauthorized appearing in this location.

No one is looking especially inclined to drag her off for her unauthorized appearance! Basically everyone in line-of-sight is really incredibly distracted.

(There were a few other tsi-imbi claims, but not necessarily audibly to Carissa, since even without working engines, the air friction on the plane is making a lot of noise.) 

....You know who would be way better at dealing with this? Her daughter.

Who is not here. Who will maybe be summoned frantically to the site of the accident, but probably still an hour too late not exactly a wrongthought but that sure is an unhelpful thought to keep repeatedly dwelling on. 

"...Give me the most-efficiently-compressed-assuming-no-shared-expertise* explanation of what context you do currently have?" she says, while petting the small child's hair. 

*A three-syllable word in Baseline.

"I'm a combat wizard with Her Majesty's Eleventh deployed at Seer's Rest at the Worldwound, from the country of Cheliax... on the planet Golarion... in the Material Plane... in Pharasma's Creation....?"

....

.........

.................

??????????????????!!!!!!!

"Tsi-imbi...?"

Carissa really hopes that's not Infernal which she's supposed to know. It's said like something she's supposed to know. 

She'll ....look around the hallway. Still no one coming to kill her for unauthorized hallway presence? If no one saw her but this woman maybe she can strangle this woman, impersonate her, and act like she was meant to be in this hallway.

...is this hallway on a boat? It's really bumpy.

Nobody looks especially inclined to kill her? 

There are a lot of people around her, though! At least a dozen (terrified-looking) people have line of sight on her. Most of them are either looking terrified without actually looking in her direction, or else clearly not at all sure what to do about her sudden appearance. 

(One person is sending a message on the within-plane cellular-texter network to the copilot's assistant, which...also starts with "tsi-imbi" but then describes exactly what physically-impossible event she just observed.) 

Also! Irris, having noticed that (unsurprisingly, at this point) she has not been sedated by medtechs due to successfully flagging a psychotic episode, is now trying to respond to the actual situation again. 

This random person seems to be CORRECT that she has zero context! For such interesting reasons! Irris is going to have to think fast about what to tell her. While also keeping the small child from panicking, but that at least is something she feels qualified for. 

Also maybe the sheer weirdness of "an alien from another world just appeared on a crashing plane" means this is actually just an Exception Handling practice scenario and no one will really actually permanently die

"...I am starting to wonder if you're from a completely different world," she manages to say. "I - don't recognize any of the locations or - Governance departments? - that you just named. And magic-users are only fictional, here, as far as I know." 

Pause. 

She lowers her voice, for the benefit of the scared child in her lap. 

"- We are currently on a passenger airplane* which just had a serious unexpected malfunction and we - are very likely going to crash in a few minutes. And - and it's a True Death scenario**, they - it doesn't look like anyone will get to the site in time to salvage our brains - I'm so sorry...." 

*Translates roughly as "powered mechanical flying device for passenger transport."
**Translates as "complete soul-destruction." 

"This is an ...airship? And it's going to crash? And you ...don't have wizards around here?

- right, okay, I can do eight in a pocket dimension and five in a Feather Fall, have you got a chain of command or should I - take bids -"

See, the issue is that Merrin would KNOW THE ANSWER to this instantly and her mind would not spin in momentary blank confusion instead. What are those...spells? Irris doesn't read enough fantasy-genre for this. 

The confusion is a lot longer than momentary, but the freezing-up about it isn't. 

"The comms person should be in contact with Exception Handling, they'll - I don't know, I assume they're already - sending someone even though ti probably wouldn't work - you should–" 

She should be prioritizing faster than this, actually, they only have a few minutes. She isn't sure how many minutes. She - should maybe be trying to verify any of what this random woman is saying, except that if Irris isn't just insane, this random woman definitely did just appear from nowhere, and - actually Irris should be handing this off to someone who reasons faster than her–

She scoops the kid into her arms and stands up, and sings "EXCEPTION!" with the legally restricted prosody and melody, and then takes a deep breath.

"I perceived this woman appearing from nowhere, she claims to be from a setting with - some form of economicmagic - that she can help - if everyone else can also see her then we need to - pass word, hear what her magic does - spin up Prediction Markets if we have time -" 

And she sits down, because standing up is a bad way to be in case of (even more than the expected) turbulence. 

Irris is not actually doing terribly on reaction speed here! She's not that far below average on raw processing speed, there is one first-rank Keeper on this plane who is sitting at the front, in the dark, in a noisy environment, and did not really have a way to find out about Carissa's appearance before someone pulled it together enough to tell her. And Irris has the advantage of spending a lot more time exposed to and thinking about weird Exception Handling scenarios, if not so much actively training on them. 

Still, someone is already urgently calling over the passenger with a vaguely-relevant background who volunteered as an assistant to the comms person, to triage and filter any potentially clever ideas from the other passengers. 

Also! This small child has in fact read a lot of fantasy! He wriggles around to stare at Carissa. "Does the Feather Fall make you hover or does it just slow acceleration? Does it work on things that aren't people? Does the pocket dimension attach to something physical or to you or does someone need to come back for it?" 

Probably this questioning should not mostly be run by a small child, even if that small child seems to have spent fewer total seconds hesitating and doubting his own sanity than several nearby people! 

Someone else jumps in. "Actually if it would take less than twenty seconds could we get a list of all of the magic you can do - in case there's a clever solution or something Exception Handling can work with -" 

(Exception Handling has not yet been notified, because triage-and-relay takes more than five seconds and the comms person is now sufficiently in doubt that he's really on a plane at all to tsi-imbi on the comms link first, before launching pretty much immediately into an explanation.) 

Carissa smiles involuntarily at the tiny child -- those are good questions! - but takes orders from the adult.

"My cantrips are little spells I can use as often as I want. Prestidigitation sorts or colors or cleans the material it targets. Light makes a visible-light" why would a language apparently have specific vocabulary for visible-light. Distinct from what, invisible-light? "Mage Hand lets me exert about a hand's worth of force at a distance. Detect Magic lets me see magic. 

Comprehending anything spoken or written, self-only, sixty minutes - uh, a round is this long, one, two, three, four, five, six, a minute's ten of them -

Feather Fall, six human-or-relevantly-similar-in-a-respect-where-everyone-I-observe-is-relevantly-similar targets-selected-by-me-in-a-purely-mental-action” she is not at all sure she’s wielding this language properly! “...within twenty feet of all other targets and, if I’m not one of the targets,  forty feet of me, lasts six rounds, it changes your speed to sixty feet per round, you start falling again in whatever manner people fall on this planet - that’s one of those things that’s different on different planets - at the end if you haven't reached the ground by then. It works on objects but they'd have to be the size of an elephant or smaller.  It works on objects with people in them but you'll get smashed against the object when its speed changes.

Secluded Fantasy-textbook-on-magic-personal-use, hides my spellbook in hyperspace, only works on specially treated paper.

Doomiest healing, touch range, over the course of a minute it heals -” does the language not have a word for ‘peasant’ or ‘civilian’ - well, it wouldn’t distinguish the kinds of people who can soak up tons of healing and the kinds who can’t, if no one can do healing - “for humans-who-aren’t-exceptions it heals anything that hasn't killed you, for humans-who-are-exceptions it at least gets you back on your feet.”  She’s pretty sure those was the wrong words to use but she’s not going to try again right now.

“Rope Trick, takes six to thirty feet of rope, builds a ten feet a side cube pocket dimension at the top of the rope in which up to eight humans-or-relevantly-similar can shelter. The rope can support a lot of weight but not arbitrary weight and I don't know the amount. More than a” they don’t have oxen apparently, or mules?  “...quadrupedal domestic plow animal, less than...thirty quadrupedal domestic plow animals? The rope anchors the pocket dimension to the frame of reference it's cast in" she was just trying to say that it, you know, moves with ships if it's on ships. Hopefully that's what she said?" "and the rope can't be moved by ordinary force once the spell is cast unless you apply enough force to break the spell. The airship crashing would I expect not affect people inside the Rope Trick."

Resist energy, single target, sixty minutes, prevents damage from electricity, fire, sound, cold, or acid, pick one.  Summon-fantasy-creature 2, summons a magically projected artificial form which is operated by an entity from a nearby dimension, six rounds, it can get a dog or an air elemental or a weak standard-native-entity-to-an alternate plane at home but I don't know if you have the same Inner and Outer planes as us.

Greater Detect Magic, self-only, six minutes, I can see magic, useless if there isn't magic around here. Fly, self-only" (this is a lie, but if she's on a failing airship she's not about to let herself get forced to use her Fly spell on someone else) "six minutes, lets me fly, that's with normal - uh, it works the way you'd expect flying to work if you grew wings that could lift you, not the way Feather Fall works. You don't grow wings though. Tongues, what I'm using to speak this language, sixty minutes, self-only. Haste, improves six peoples' reflexes and reaction times  for six rounds. I'll need it if you want me to time the feather fall right with humans-who-aren’t-exceptions - uh, humans who can't survive forty, fifty feet of error in timing the Feather Fall."

This is now being relayed in real time to the Exception Handling Emergency Communications Relay.

There was already rather a lot of global attention on the situation, even before a magic user from an alternatephysics setting apparently accidentally teleported onto the crashing plane. It was previously pretty unlikely that even the full resources Exception Handling can bring to bear would be enough to save anyone on the plane, but they were going to try. 

(Merrin has been hastily extracted from a date and is en route to the predicted crash site on the fastest supersonic plane stationed in Default and that can do an aerial drop. She's certed on doing a controlled aerial drop and landing in power armor; she can get down to the site without the fast plane having to find a place to land, or do more than slightly slow down. Given the speed at which the damaged passenger plane is losing altitude, she is going to be – would have been – 20 minutes too late, but - maybe barely in time to determine which if any of the casualties might not have died instantly, might have retained circulation for a few precious minutes despite catastrophic injuries, whose brains might still be salvageable... There are helicopters of backup coming from other locations, medical and other personnel, but helicopters aren't supersonic, and Merrin is going to get there first.) 

Being dragged away mid-date into a literal nightmare scenario is really incredibly jarring! Being dragged away mid-date because the plane that her MOTHER is on is CRASHING due to a FREAK ACCIDENT INVOLVING A METEORITE, in an effort that will almost certainly be futile, is worse than jarring. Merrin is hoping that she can wrestle her brain into at least being more focused by the time she has to jump out of a transport plane flying just barely below the speed of sound and land on rocky dangerous terrain and then almost certainly fail to do anything to prevent around a hundred True Deaths. 

Exception Handling will wait two minutes on sending Merrin an update, because while it may be a miraculously positive update, it's also weird and confusing, and the consensus is that Merrin is not really going to be processing weird and confusing inputs at her usual capacity until it's been more than like three minutes since she was yoinked from a date. 

They don't have very much time to come up with a plan. When the apparent magic user appeared, the plane had maybe four minutes left in the air. They have nonzero control even with an entire wing disabled, though, and the plan is now shifting from "try to land with as little momentum as possible", in hopes of a controlled crash that might not kill everyone instantly. Now it looks like they - should maybe be trying a plan that gives them as much remaining airtime as possible? 

Prediction markets are spinning up and they have a team of Exception Handling strategic-improvisation experts quickly trying to generate as many variations as possible of plans that incorporate the various claimed magical abilities as they hear about them. Most of them will be terrible, but it makes sense to separate out the brainstorming step, and let the markets decide which plans are obviously doomed and which are worth looking into. They need time, though. 

Lists of questions are already being put together for the magic user, and there's time for ten seconds of prediction market activity on prioritizing the order of questions, because the time to answer is an intensely limited resource. 

(And, of course, there's already a priority list being generated for, if they can't get everyone out alive - even if they do manage to come up with a plan whereby Merrin can collect the cold intact heads of everyone else - who goes first for space in the pocket dimension or gets Feather Fall'd. It's based on a number of factors: advance directives, how much each person's insurance will pay to save their life, additional funding from employers or families, and whether Governance has a specific interest in keeping this person alive rather than in cryo. Merrin's Financial Advisor and at least one of Merrin's boyfriends are putting in rather large bids for her mother to be high on the priority list, but Exception Handling might have made that call anyway, given that Merrin will be on the scene a solid fifteen or twenty minutes before anyone else, and may have to triage and treat serious injures even if she doesn't have to parallel-handle some stupidly large number of emergency cryo procedures. A protocol is frantically being adapted for her, because although Exception Handling sim-scenario-writers are extremely creative, they have not specifically done "you arrive on the scene and find 50-90 chilled heads in a pocket dimension".) 

The volunteer onboard-comms-assistant is now back over at Carissa's end of the plane, with an earpiece and a radio link with the main flight comms person. (The electronics needed for high-bandwidth information transfer usable by passengers were damaged in the incident.) Other passengers have arranged to move around so that he can secure himself in a seat, and point at the one beside it for Carissa. 

"Try to keep answers under ten seconds per question," he says. "Does using your magic require concentration that emergency maneuvers would interrupt, and-or will your top current plans be compromised by a higher-speed crash impact. If not we can buy longer airborne to prepare." 

"I can... cast in combat? I'm iffy if I'm actively on fire. I...wasn't assuming anything about how fast your airship was crashing."