Subject: Furiously typing...
Author:
Posted on: 2011-06-26 04:05:00 UTC
Aster Corbett walks into the bar, hops up on a stool, and promptly droops all over the counter.
"I can't write this mission report. I don't want to think about The Hidden Secret anymore..."
Her clothes are rather disheveled. It looks like she has been on-mission for days...
Well, we all know the atmosphere of a bar. Smoky air, friendly bartenders, complementary bowls of peanuts... So why can't we have that at the PPC building? The answer? We can!
Welcome to the Bleeprin Bar, first mentioned by Agent Xericka after experiencing an example of bad biology in a bad slash. Simply put, come here after a mission to find happiness at the bottom of a mug of Bleepbeer. Or, at the very least, forgetting why you wanted to get drunk in the first place.
Have fun!
The door of the bar opened, admitting a young woman dressed almost entirely in brown, the flashpatch that was sewn on her ankle-length coat marking her as a Bad Slasher. She took a good look around her, noting the various people and nodding to those she knew before heading over to the bar and ordering a bright green drink called an Eleventh Doctor Sonic Screwdriver. It was a normal screwdriver with Midori in it, and one of the Bad Slasher's favorite drinks.
Maeryn sipped at her drink before taking a seat at an empty table, watching the people around her. Kaliel, her symbiote, would make sure she didn't get too drunk, but for now, Maeryn was enjoying her drink. She didn't know if anyone would be joining her, but she wouldn't mind if someone did.
Agent Suicide did not, as a rule, class himself as a social drinker in either sense of the term: he hadn't boozed in friendly company since his original death, and he was not at home to Mister Moderation. However, if questioned, he would admit that he was always open to the possibility of change--especially when a good-looking woman was part of the equation. And when weighed against the abovementioned good-looking woman, even engaging in social drinking could be considered acceptable.
As far as Suicide could tell (HQ time being what it was), he had been released from FicPsych about three days before. He'd been laid up there for almost a week, recovering from the combined mental and physical trauma inflicted by one Archir the Emerald, and had spent the occasional moment of lucid consciousness attempting to get to know one Nurse Jenni Robinson. (Ah, Jenni, who was sharp as a xiphos and got such an interesting look on her face whenever she read his medical records . . .) His plans to ask her out for a drink had been temporarily halted by a mission into a continuum he didn't know, but after fighting with both self-insert troll Sues and his own abysmal communication abilities, he'd finally managed to send her a note and arrange an assignation/date/meeting/thing.
To Suicide, the bar was a good spot for a rendezvous. It was fairly public and had decent lighting, meaning that if she tried to knife him, there would be plenty of witnesses to corroborate the facts and no way for her to hide the weapon--both important considerations in Suicide's past interactions with women. Granted, Jenni was a class act and therefore completely out of his realm of experience, but Be Prepared was the kind of motto he would've had if he had a motto.
Plus, the Bar had pretzels. He liked pretzels.
He perched himself on a stool by the taps, ordered something with three Xes and a biohazard symbol next to it on the menu, and sipped his drink while glancing around at the clientele. For a moment, Suicide thought he glimpsed an animated teddy bear in the corner, but he shook his head and double-checked his drink. Damn, that must be some good stuff.
Jenni was pretty sure she was running behind when she made it to the Bleepka Bar. Thus, she was less composed than she had intended to be when she made her entrance, possibly even a little flustered. It took her a moment of standing in the doorway to adjust to the relatively subdued atmosphere (the occasional peanut notwithstanding) that accompanied the drowning of unpleasant memories. She had no trouble spotting Suicide, however, with his height and distinctive long, gray hair.
Her own hair hung loose, reaching the bottom of her shoulder-blades and still wavy from the braid she usually wore. She pushed it back behind her ears as she approached and touched one of the Scythian's large shoulders once near enough.
"Hi," she said with a sheepish smile. "Sorry I wasn't here sooner. I got called in at the last minute to process some characters I've never even heard of, and I had to stop by the Nursery to see Henry." She also had to rifle through her wardrobe for something nicer than usual, which meant the only top she owned that could be described as a blouse rather than just a t-shirt. The article in question was not dyed, but was worked with trailing little flowers in various colors around the sleeves and neck, and it had buttons. She took a breath, cutting herself off before she started to ramble about a silly thing like that, and offered a proper smile. "It's good to see you, you know, not concussed."
Pivoting to see her, Suicide found himself actually glad that Diocletian had ordered him to change into a clean uniform. Jenni looked . . . well, nice, but that didn't nearly seem to cover it. 'Classy' might be closer to the mark. (It wasn't a word that normally applied to a woman who was as handy as Jenni was with a set of psychiatric restraints, but there was something damned classy about a woman who was that good at her job.) He did a quick mental review of everything Dio had drilled into his head about modern behavior and pulled out a seat for Jenni.
"It's a limited-time offer," he said with a grin as he did so. "But you did a hell of a good job fixing me up, so I thought you might like a chance to get acquainted with your handiwork before I wind up wrecking it again."
Wait, was that sleazy? 'Sleaze' was a concept heretofore unfamiliar to Suicide until Dio defined it as 'you, between drinks one and eight.' He took a sip of his hell-brew to cover his momentary confusion.
"Want something to drink? The Bleepka Collins isn't half bad."
Jenni slid into the seat with a nod of gratitude and shuffled herself closer to the bar.
"Thanks, but I'll stick to soft drinks. I'm what they call a total lightweight. Featherweight, even." She opened her mouth to say something hilarious about the last time she'd slipped and wound up in an unplanned situation as a result, but second thoughts declared that a bad topic for a first date, so it turned into an awkward pause while she scrambled for something else. She couldn't think of anything that didn't involve even more awkward references to classified medical documents, and she shook her head.
"Damn. They say never date a patient, but I never learn. Help me out here. If I'm getting to know my handiwork, tell me something about you that isn't in your charts."
The truth was, she was every bit as confused as Suicide. She couldn't remember the last time she'd properly dated anyone, wasn't even sure she ever had. Most of the places she'd had lives didn't even know the concept. This middle ground between restraint and passion was as alien as an immigrant from Alpha Centauri.
"Featherweight, huh?" Suicide raised an eyebrow, trying not to look as if he was filing that information away for future reference and failing miserably. Judging by Jenni's expression, there was a story or two there, and he usually liked stories like that. His mental Diocletian gave him a smack, though, and he tried to respect Jenni's attempt to change the subject. "Soft drink for the lady," he added to the bartender. Dorf, privy to the mysterious oracular abilities that every bartender in the multiverse seemed to possess, likely already knew what kind she wanted.
"And as for things that aren't in my charts," Suicide continued while the drink was being fetched, "you'll have to be a little more explicit--" Gods-damned Freudian slips "--exact about what you want to know. I'm pretty sure FicPsych's records have covered some parts of me pretty thoroughly."
. . . wait. Shit. Double-entendre? He didn't know. Dorf brought the drink, thank Apia.
"Tell you what," he continued, setting down his own drink. "If I believed in fairness, I'd say it was unfair that you got to see my records while I have to guess. So I'll trade you fact for fact." What was that thing that Ithalond always said when he'd had too much Dorwinion? Oh, right. "Quid pro quo, Clarice."
Jenni had made the mistake of taking a sip of her drink, a lime soda, thinking he was finished and it was safe before the man trotted out that last line. At least the resulting undignified splort might mask the effort she'd been making not to laugh previously.
"Okay, hold on," she said once she'd recovered sufficiently, grinning. "I'm not a criminal behaviorist and you're not a serial killer the last time I checked, but . . . " The whole eating people thing could only lead to an off-color joke. After he'd been trying so hard not to go there, she couldn't very will dive into the gutter herself. She cleared a remnant of soda from her throat. "Sure. What you said. Tit for tat."
. . . Damn.
Suicide took a mental memo: never repeat anything Ithalond said when he was into the Dorwinion. On the other hand, it had partially broken the ice, which was of a distinctly awkward and small-talky variety. Desperate times, desperate measures, etcetera.
"As a matter of fact, I might . . ." Okay, was mentioning the fact that he'd killed an awful lot of technically-innocent people back in the day considered a turn-off? It sure worked for the camp followers, but again, this was definitely new territory and 'I might qualify as a serial killer' sounded like the kind of thing that would make his partner groan and hit him with a copy of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. He switched tacks. "I might be able to work with that."
He wasn't even touching the tit thing. Which was too bad, because he could do a lot with . . . did mental entendres count?
Picking up a little cardboard coaster (printed with a picture of a cactus), he absentmindedly tore it in half. "I'll start while you catch your breath, shall I?" Jenni gave him a Look, which he responded to with a 'who, me?' expression. "Hmmm, here's a good one. When I was nineteen, I pissed off my master by falling asleep during an eight-day training trial. He was so angry, he threatened to release me from service and set me up with a pension. Had to grovel for forgiveness until he let me off with a beating." He laughed a little at the memory. Ahh, good times, good times. "I don't think FicPsych knows that story; I'd hate to have them think I was, y'know, crazy or something."
He took a sip of his drink, still grinning a little. "Your turn. Tell me something strange about yourself."
"That is a little backwards by many people's standards, but maybe not insane. Maybe." She grinned back, then grew thoughtful. "Something strange, huh? Hm." She took a drink of her own to buy time to think. There was a fair bit of strangeness to choose from, but most of it was a bit too strange for day one, in her opinion.
"Well . . . there was the one time I nearly got myself killed by vampires. Not your cute, sparkly modern vamps, mind you. Think wolves, only human-shaped and smarter. This was a generic fantasyverse, a different life altogether, and I was also nineteen." She grinned at the coincidence. That wasn't why she'd chosen the story, but it was even more fitting for it.
"I was with this village, helping with a minor epidemic, and I learned they had an ongoing problem with these guys. When I finally saw one, I couldn't believe it—she was a pathetic, scrawny little thing sniffing around the edge of the quarantine tent. So, in my infinite wisdom, I took it upon myself to go talk to them and get their side of the story. I figured, hey, they're intelligent, surely something can be worked out so nobody has to suffer. Luckily I was right, but only insofar as I was personally novel enough for the guy in charge to let me off with a couple of scars."
She lifted her chin and pointed to the place on her throat where the little white spots were, kept as a reminder not to get cocky. She did it with a smile, though. After the bite, it hadn't been all bad.
"Still, it's hard to negotiate when both sides think you're out of your wee little mind. The village kindly packed my bags for me and I never found out what happened, if anything changed or not. I doubt it, but nothing's impossible." She shrugged and resettled herself, then tilted her head in the universal questioning gesture. "Your turn."
That got a bark of a laugh from Suicide. "In my experience, that kind of thing usually happens whether you make time with the local monsters or not. I've never seen a small village play nice with the Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman act. Remind me to tell you about the villagers near Thermopylae some time." He arched an eyebrow, remembering what Jenni had said when he'd first come stumbling into FicPsych. "Or maybe not. That might be too Greek."
He tore each half of the coaster into halves again, then pushed them back together with the tip of his finger, while he considered what to say next. He had to say, he liked the way Jenni had shown off the vampire bite: he appreciated a lady with spirit. (Somewhere, the universe groaned, but Suicide was technically unaware of the cliche and survived with only yet another few years' worth of bad karma.)
"Okay, here's a good one. Everyone says Sparta was ruled by the men, and most of the time, it was. But nobody was going to actually believe it while people like Gorgo and Arete were around." He shook his head, remembering. "The lady Arete was actually the wife of two of my masters--first Iatrokles, and then when he died, she married his brother Dienekes. Well, she knew me from when I was sixteen on; she'd already been married to Iatrokles when I came to Sparta.
"When I'd been enough of a shit that even a pension threat wouldn't do it, Iatrokles or Dienekes would send me to Arete. She had this way about her--just giving you this look, like she knew everything and could just turn you inside-out. She had the real andreia, and the gods help you if she thought you were threatening her family."
Suicide cocked his head, offering Jenni a lopsided grin. "Even she never broke out the restraints, though."
Jenni's smile had a tendency to wander off to the right when mischief was afoot, and it did so now. "Well, to be fair, you were going on about spines being removed and evil testosterone-eating ficubuses coming after you from beyond the veil. Powers only know what would've happened if we hadn't strapped you down. I wasn't about to let you run off and do more damage to yourself, or anybody else. Gods help you, indeed. Arete sounds like my kind of lady."
She drummed her fingers on the countertop, trying to come up with another story.
"I don't personally object to Greekness, by the way," she said in the meantime. "It's just another variation on the theme of being human, which I rather enjoy. Though I will admit to being curious about that incident. Ilraen had more questions than answers, poor kid." She shook her head, dispelling that train of thought. "Never mind—I'll bet you don't want to talk about that now. Let me see. It's hard to come up with anything that doesn't touch on my sordid past as a fan character, and nobody wants to hear that crap. Is there anything in particular you do want to know about?" She leaned her chin into the palm of her hand and peered up at him.
Suicide didn't shudder, but for a moment, it was a near thing. Archir the Emerald, the dewey-eyed three-year-old "Istari child," would be cropping up in his dreams for a looooong time to come.
"Now that is a story for another time," he said as he continued shredding the coaster. Dorf the bartender gave him an irked look as the little pile of cardboard confetti began to mount. "I will say that I like gods a lot better when they're not sitting on peoples' laps and putting the Mind Whammy on anyone with a functioning brain. But since you're not sharing sordid pasts, I'll hold off on the sordid present."
He considered her for a moment, thinking. She definitely seemed to have more stories than he had guessed before, and that tilt of the head seemed almost teasing . . . Hmmm.
"How'd you join?" he said finally, adding another little piece of cardboard to the pile. "The PPC, I mean. I got hit with the resurrection stick and shanghaied, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't your route." He nodded towards the bite marks on her neck, his tone a little sly. "Unless your friend with the overgrown dental implements got a little--overenthusiastic?"
It was Jenni's turn to laugh, though not before quietly stilling the cardboard destruction by covering his hands with one of hers. She hadn't meant to further agitate him, and getting on the bartender's bad side was a bad idea, too.
"No, I survived that. I haven't ever been killed, that I can recall." This was potentially an odd remark, at least in different company, but she said it with a straight face. "Anyway . . . the full explanation gets kinda meta, but in brief, I had a bit of an existential crisis in the Potterverse and realized I had better quit my wild ways and settle down before I really lost myself out there. HQ is easy to find if you're heading nowhere in particular, because that's where it exists, like veins running through the rock faces of space-time." She gestured with her free hand, indicating the vast complexity of the multiverse to which a geology metaphor really couldn't do justice, before her mind's eye returned to the here and now.
She laughed again. "See, what did I say? Sordid. But, I promise I'm stable. Working in FicPsych has definitely helped me get my head on straight, and I've got Henry now." She grew fond at the mention of her adopted son and turned the expression on Suicide. "You'll have to meet him eventually, if this goes on." Clearly, she hoped it would. The man had a sense of humor and nice eyes, and certainly depths to be explored.
As far as Suicide knew, Jenni hadn't been a Potterverse native. But if she'd been there when she had her crisis, and only found the PPC after . . . hmmmm. More to her than met the eye, it seemed, though Suicide wasn't exactly shocked by that. Her hand was smooth, with just a hint of callus on a couple of the fingertips--probably from too much time spent subduing self-destructive canons and possessed agents.
"Sordid's just another word for 'fun' as far as I'm concerned," he said, offering her another crooked grin. "But you gotta be careful talking about it, because the Universal Laws of Irony probably don't appreciate a PPCer with a dramatic-type backstory." He shot a glance at the ceiling, as if checking for gathering ominous clouds or lightning about to strike them. "Nothing so far, but better safe than sorry."
He didn't miss the change in her expression at the mention of her son. His upbringing told him that an adopted child was considered blood, but he couldn't quite wrap his head around adopting what was effectively a combination of Harry Potter and Snape. Still . . .
"Fair warning," he continued. He wasn't quite deadly serious, and he didn't quite know how to phrase things, but if he was going to talk to Jenni any further then he had to suck it up and touch on a serious topic that he normally didn't have anything to do with. "You probably should know that I know nothing about kids. Except Ar--you know, the Sue kids--or the young rankers, and I'm pretty sure you don't want anyone pushing yours into a tree to toughen 'im up." Was that gauche? His mental Diocletian was oddly silent on that point. "But I know Ilraen likes him, and as far as I can tell, the fuzzy centaur's got good instincts. He sounds like a good kid."
Falling silent a little awkwardly, Suicide shot another glance at the ceiling. Y'know, just in case. PPC headquarters tended to be vindictive when it came to seriousness.
She raised an eyebrow at the tree remark, but since what he said was no more than the truth she nodded and let it pass at that.
"The warning is duly noted," she replied. "I appreciate that you probably didn't have much time for little kids in your life. I'm not worried about it, though." She smiled and patted his hands. They practically told her everything she needed to know about him without words: strong, rough, and scarred, yet she'd seen their proficiency with a bandage, too.
She followed his glance at the ceiling, perhaps sensing the Laws of Narrative lurking. The bar seemed to have gotten quieter, which would generally herald somebody unfortunate walking in, or a fight breaking out, or something else descending on them to ruin the moment, but a glance around the room revealed nothing.
"The Ironic Overpower is thumbing its nose at us," she remarked, rolling her eyes. "Bugger if I know what to do about it, either. No topic is really safe. And, if I'm being honest, I've had Nume's accusation of snaring and clutches buzzing in my ear. I see where he gets it, so I'm trying to sort of sit back and not steer too much to prove him wrong. Is that lame?" She glanced sidelong at Suicide with a wry grin. It wouldn't have surprised her if that particular personage had been the one to walk in on them, if such had been the will of the Ironic Overpower. Not one bit.
Suicide laughed a little. "Nah, it's not lame. But Nume can--" The sentence that followed was guttural and nigh-untranslatable, its origins and true meaning lost in the mists of time since the Scythian people had joined their Grecian and Caucasian cousins in cities and forsook the life of the roving tribesman. Its tone might be approximated by the phrase 'go piss up a rope.'
"That kid doesn't know a thing about clutches or snaring," Suicide continued, mentally writing off every fellow male under the age of 35 as feckless juveniles, "or he wouldn't be trying so hard to avoid 'em. But if you'd prefer to let me steer, then I suppose I'll just have to live with that." His mental Dio smacked him again, but he told her to shut up and waved something shiny until she went away.
"As for the Ironic Overpower, then what happens will happen. Once you're dead, it can't get you any more, so [untranslatable euphemism] to it." He shot one more glance at the ceiling just in case, but nothing had yet struck him down where he sat. Maybe he was suffering from a low irony content.
Jenni hadn't run off yet or tried to knife him, which was nice. He ran a thumb over her back of her hand, feeling the soft texture of the pale skin there, and smacked down several unbidden and highly personal thoughts. Damn, he really had forgotten how to relate to other people.
"My turn, right?" he said after a moment, clumsily trying to steer the conversation out of angsty waters. "My mother was a priestess." That sounded a little more dramatic and Overpower-baiting than he'd meant, so he hurried to explain. "After hearing her stories about the higher virtues, the Greek sheep[expletive]ing gods were one hell of a surprise. When I first got here, I thought Sues were goddesses that the world was finally wising up and killing before they could transform anyone into something humiliating." He snickered a bit. "That was before I ran into the possession-Sues. Talk about being turned into pigs . . . "
Slightly stunned by the number of things she could have said at various points, Jenni found herself settling on general amusement and, thanks to the "kid" remark, contemplation of the apparent discrepancy between their ages. She supposed she should have considered the fact that Suicide looked at least twice her age, but it simply hadn't crossed her mind before now. She had never bothered to count the number of years she'd lived in various incarnations, but she suspected she could have called most of the people in HQ "kid" with room to spare. Still, stranger things had happened.
She sat up straighter for the talk of gods and Sues. "Well, you can't say the two are mutually exclusive, that's for sure. Having power doesn't make you a god, though. I'm not really sure what does make a god, and I've met a few. Hades, for one—well, a version. Probably not precisely the same one you would've heard about. This was in the Lounge, see, back when I first joined up. We had all sorts in there, everything from agents to canons even to authors, sometimes." She paused. "Uh, stop me if any of this freaks you out. I don't know how you feel about matters of the fourth wall, and stuff."
"If they're in the here and now, with human foibles and making human errors, then they're not the real gods." That was the considered opinion of Professor Suicide, a man with the metaphysical certainty that can only come from being surrounded by large angry philosophical types with spears.
"I mean, there may be more to it than that," he continued, shrugging one shoulder a little. "But if there's anything I've picked up from the Word Worlds and all this continuum crap, it's that we haven't yet seen the infinite. Each of the worlds has their gods, and those gods are supreme there, but the real ones--the ones who made and rule all the worlds--aren't going to be that visible. Only the virtues exist in both their worlds and ours, and that's the only way we know the gods in this life. You can't have a pint with Oetosyr."
At which point he cleared his throat, turned slightly red at the realization that he was in danger of committing Badass-Reputation Seppuku, and took a mouthful of his drink to cover the confusion. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be listening in; most of the inhabitants of the Bleepka Bar were there to drown sorrows and/or each other, and after the days PPC agents tended to have, most of them wouldn't have eavesdropped on a dramatic heart-to-heart if you'd paid them.
"Forget it," he said, putting down the mug. "But if gods aren't gods, then Sues sure as hell aren't." He offered Jenni another lopsided grin. "Most of 'em die too quickly anyway."
Jenni took the turn away from the topic of the fourth wall as an indication that Suicide was one of the ones whose minds tended to slide away from the implications regarding their own nature as fictional characters, and made a mental note to keep quiet about it. At least until further evidence turned up. As far as she was concerned it was all a matter of perspective, and it didn't much bother her, but she knew herself to be a little odd on that score.
The turn he did take was fascinating enough, and she relaxed again listening to him, leaning an elbow on the bar top. She couldn't help but feel a touch of affection at his embarrassment at waxing philosophical. Hidden depths indeed. The instinct to dig deeper kicked in firmly, despite her success thusfar at keeping it at bay, and she had to think about what to say next.
"Sues aren't gods," she agreed for a start. "I think the Narnia aficionados would get a bit cheesed off if you told them Aslan wasn't a proper god because he likes to turn up in the form of a lion, though. And Eru . . . well, there's some debate about a possible physical incarnation. But anyway, they pass the 'human foibles' test.
"On the other hand," she went on, picking up enthusiasm for a topic close to her heart, "why do the ones who don't pass go among the mortal people except to see what it's like on the other side? I think it's a case of greener grass, so to speak. On one side, you've got power and immortality, not to mention a great view, but the insider's view is pretty amazing, too. Experiences mean more when they're limited and focused on just one moment. The hurts hurt more, but the good things, when they happen . . . the pain is worth it, if you ask me. Without the bad stuff, the good stuff, the virtues, are meaningless. That's why I—"
She stopped short, afraid that she'd avoided digging just to climb a tree instead. She even had the wide-eyed look of a spooked cat about her, which she hid by studying the ice melting in her glass, but only for the moment it took her to realize that obviously covering for something was just as bad as saying it outright, not to mention an attention trap that she considered beneath her. Oh well; too late now. She glanced up again with that wry smile. "I'm not really used to talking about what's in my head. There's the Ironic Overpower for you. I definitely believe in that one."
Suicide couldn't quite follow the leap of Jenni's logic, but the way she seized on the topic--and her own embarrassment--definitely signed to him that this was something she too had done a lot of thinking about. Her own evasive comments about the Potterverse and "waking up" had already done some heavy hinting, but this was even more interesting.
Even so, though, he wasn't made for long philosophical debates. He'd heard Athenians take logic in circles that made his head spin, but he didn't really think of himself as a debater: he knew what he knew, deep in his gut, and it stayed there no matter what he saw and heard. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall etcetera etcetera. He wasn't sure he could provide the in-depth thinking that Jenni seemed to be after.
Still . . . "Eru and Aslan are gods of their own worlds," he said, finishing his drink in one mouthful. "That's their business, and I don't question that--mainly because it gets Dio and Ithalond pissy. But I don't think we've seen the great gods yet. The ones who created the creators of the Word Worlds, the ones who've stayed quiet despite all of this . . . They stay on their side. Only the virtues cross between, and those are the true things that come from them. Everything else is just bitching about the details.
"The base things--the fear and greed and anger--do make the virtues feel finer, but they don't come from the same place. Even if there wasn't any evil, good would still be good. It would just feel different." He swept aside the pile of cardboard and put his mug down in the wet ring it had left on the bar. "But we can't know that, or anything like it, because at the end of the day we're only human."
He cocked an eyebrow and surveyed the bar, which currently boasted seventeen different species and Frank, the Hooloovoo secretary. "So to speak."
As he said that, Suicide's eyes flicked over Jenni. He was not a subtle man, or a particularly wise one, by any definition of the words--but he'd spent a lot of time staring at people who were angry, mourning, or even just righteously pissed off. He wondered what was going through Jenni's mind. Hell, he wondered what was going through his mind. Dr. Freedenburg had once supplied him with a copy of the novel in which he'd been created (and if that didn't ... with a guy's head, nothing did) and the narrator had said his talkativeness was uncommon. Was it possible for he himself to be out of his own character? Not something he wanted to bring up in casual conversation.
"I'll buy the Ironic Overpower," he said finally. "Mainly because I think it's telling me I'm acting OOC." To the bartender: "Same again, okay?"
That seemed to be a cue to let the subject go. Volumes yet could be spoken on Jenni's part, but not at the expense of sending her date OOC! "We surely can't have that. Especially not with my boss' secretary hanging around." What a sentient shade of blue could even find to do in a bar, she had no idea. Maybe just soaking up the atmosphere? Anyway, she grinned. "If you're really worried I bet we could bum a CAD off somebody, though."
As for herself, she wrestled briefly with just saying to hell with the enigmatic crap she was perpetrating, but by this time keeping certain secrets was a deeply ingrained habit, not easily shed. Anyway, if there had been a moment for it, it was past now. She followed Suicide's example and drained her own drink with finality.
Suicide signaled to the bartender, and Dorf brought both of them refills. The Scythian paid in Azeroth gold, which Dorf took without complaint: with the thriving black market throughout Headquarters, he would doubtless be able to exchange it at a ludicrously advantageous rate, and it was unlikely that anyone was checking the Bar's books anyway.
Jenni's offer to break out a canon analysis device had Suicide failing to suppress a laugh. "No thanks. If I'm gonna die, I'd really prefer that the CoD not be a CAD. Those lunatics in DoSAT don't need any encouragement." He shook his head. "Please, tell me FicPsych is planning to do something with them. I swear to any god you care to name that they're working for the other side."
She was pleased at the laugh. Maybe calling "OOC" was going a bit far, but this did seem much the more natural way to be.
After waving a hello to Maeryn, who had just entered, and noting that the Bad Slasher didn't seem to intend on joining them, Jenni nodded thanks for the refill both to Dorf and her companion. His last remark left her a bit puzzled.
"What, you mean do something with DoSAT? Nah. They might be lunatics, but they need it to be brilliant. As far as I'm concerned they're all big damn heroes, especially Dann, and Makes-Things, of course. I mean, nobody's sure exactly what happened anymore, but the guy stood off against giant macroviruses and apparently survived—though I heard one theory that says he actually cloned himself and downloaded a copy of his mind into the clone, and that's what we have now, and you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" She stared a moment, registering the confused look she was getting. Most of the people who had been there tended to take it for granted that everyone except the newest of newbies knew about the epidemic and the invasion, and she was no exception. Suicide, however, had not been there and hadn't had the opportunity to find out sooner. She recovered with a quick headshake and a sip of her drink, briefly wishing it was something a little stronger than lime soda.
"Well, it's a tale and a half, if you want to hear it. This was back in `08, a couple of years after—after you lot disappeared," she corrected, figuring that a mention of the cause of disappearance would go no better with Suicide than it did with Nume, who had tended to look like he was being strangled with naughty things soaked in naughtier fluids. Which, given the badfic in question, might not have been far from the truth. Of course, he was better now, what with all the Bleepka—the look was now more of a desire to strangle the speaker—but that still didn't warrant bringing it up on a whim to anybody.
"Ran away, you mean? Let's leave it at that," Suicide responded, though without animosity. The bartender had put a little umbrella in his drink for some reason, and it was beginning to char slightly. "Easier on the scumble next time," he said to Dorf as he picked the umbrella out.
"'08 was a year for plagues, then. Dio and I missed Corrupted Blood, but we were on the ground floor Azeroth's Great Zombie Invasion," he continued after the poor abused umbrella had been disposed of. "All I know about what happened in HQ is what I heard from the Marquis, though, and that mainly consisted of 'do you know what I've been put through? Look at my petals! Look at my petals! I'm shedding everywhere, I swear I am! Macrovirus epidemics, Mary Sue invasions, and now it turns out two agents were hiding unregistered in a canon? You're going to give me Dutch Elm Disease! I ought to have you both dried and turned into tea!'" Suicide's imitation of the Marquis's psychic voice was about as accurate as a vocal imitation of thought-speech could be, although the Marquis probably wouldn't have followed it up with another snort of a laugh. "I didn't dare ask because he might've sent me back to Bad Slash. Seems there are fates worse than death."
He turned in his seat to face Jenni a little more head-on. "Enlighten me, would you? And does this have anything to do with Nume and his Bleepka problem?"
Jenni tried hard to restrain herself to a polite chuckle, but by "Dutch Elm Disease" she was laughing out loud. "Oh, that's just like him. That's very good," she managed to say.
In response to the prompt, she shifted herself, mirroring him. "No, that goes way back, and I can't say it's much of a problem. If you'd known him before Bleeprin . . . " she shook her head. "Another time. Anyway, about 2008. You'll have to ask more people than me to get a really good idea of what went on, but I'll tell you what happened to me:
"I'd literally just come back from an assignment with Nume and Ilraen. It was a Pern crossover, and I was called in as a canon expert. The mission itself is another story, but the important part is that I recruited Derik from that fic, and the poor man lost his dragon and was a complete wreck. I wasn't in great shape either," she added offhandedly for the sake of truth. "So I stumbled in to FicPsych half-carrying him, and nobody was there at the door. I found out they were preparing for a test of some never-before-heard-of lockdown system, and the Kudzu ordered me off to rest." She was still irked at the memory. Leaving somebody in the state the former rider had been in, even in the care of trusted colleagues, rubbed her the wrong way. "By the time I woke up, we were in lockdown, and fat lot of good it did. Plenty of people think it was just a ruse for something else, but whatever it was, it didn't keep the infected Sues out."
She paused for a drink to wet her throat. "So that was the start of the Macrovirus Epidemic. We went from a bullshit lockdown to a very real quarantine, nobody in or out of the department—including the Kudzu, who'd gone somewhere with the other Flowers. We'd already packed off the agents, thank goodness, but we were stuck with a bunch of canons who gradually became more in-character and aware of what was happening as it dragged on. I spent most of my time with them and Derik, but there was fighting at the front doors. Those things got huge, hence macrovirus. We didn't even see the worst of it, but we lost Bogglish and Pablum, and nearly Parwill and Immie, too." Another pause, this one solemn.
"About a month, this dragged on. Plenty of people were stuck in their response centers, but the ones who were in the field for the lockdown were luckier. This is where DoSAT helped out—they'd duplicated TARDISes, and picked up the folk in the field. Those agents were able to get around. And that's how the DIA picked me up for a job." She glanced down at the floor a moment, considering, then looked up again. "This is the part where I mention I have certain extrasensory abilities and hope you don't run screaming. As a rule I don't use them unless I have to."
Suicide nodded as Jenni spoke, trying to picture it all. The idea of being trapped in a few rooms, just waiting for the Sues and giant monster viruses to break in . . . you wouldn't catch him saying it, but the thought was eerie. He'd never been in a battle that didn't end in a charge, and waiting for the enemy to break in and kill you gave him chills. Jenni was hard for him to read, but the fact that she hadn't been able to do much in that situation either seemed to be eating at her. There was the slightest waver in her voice when she mentioned Bogglish and Pablum.
"A month-long siege," he said finally, when Jenni paused. "What a ...ing mess." He briefly considered saying 'I wish I'd been there,' but everyone would know it was a lie. One agent wouldn't have made much of a difference, especially in a rats-in-a-trap situation like that.
The thought was so distracting that it took Suicide a minute to catch up with the last thing Jenni had said. Then his brain grabbed him by the collar of his uniform, gave him a good shake, and painted the words 'extrasensory abilities' in bright red across his cerebral cortex. Normally not fazed by bizarre things (between the Dutch-speaking Elf, the living microwave and all), Suicide seriously objected to having someone reading the kind of thoughts he'd been entertaining since Jenni had started playing with his hair that day in FicPsych.
"Extrasensory abilities," he said. "Fair enough. Bartender--tinfoil hat, please?"
Jenni's smile was a little tighter at the edges than a purely amused expression would warrant, perhaps finding the joke in bad taste since she'd just said she didn't make a habit of flaunting her assets. This was exactly why she didn't make a habit of mentioning them, too. Still, the concern for personal privacy behind his reaction was well known to her by dint of long experience with people unused to her sort, so she hastened to reassure him.
"I don't go where I'm not invited," she said. "Promise." A return tease, about being able to guess the filthy male fantasies an ancient soldier like him was almost certainly entertaining without actually peeking into his thoughts, was shelved as being in even worse taste than the tinfoil hat thing. It did temporarily put a proper smile back on her face, but there was the story to continue, and that wiped it away again.
"Anyway, yeah. Big ...ing mess. So, the DIA agent turned up in a TARDIS and shanghaied me off to New Caledonia. Dr. Freedenberg was not thrilled, let me tell you, but we didn't have a choice. The good thing was I got an explanation of what the hell was going on, even if it is the most cracked-out explanation possible." Her tone took on an ironic note, reflecting her opinion of how much sense was made by any of what she was relating. "It seems there's a mirror multiverse out there, where we're the Enforcers of the Plot Continuum and the agents are Sues, and there was an incident where some of our agents got swapped with some of theirs a couple months before the lockdown. I'm not sure I buy the part about the lockdown being in response to a threat from them, but anyway, this is important because the EPC's version of Honesah—the pegacorn Sue?—was part of an underground movement who sympathized with us and wanted to help. Her plan was to use her Sue-powers to control a handful of Daleks from her 'verse, and direct them to just kill the bugs. Our side was understandably skeptical, so they asked me to be a human lie detector. I still can't believe a batshit plan like that worked."
She shook her head and went for the soda again, going off the tracks of her narrative in wide-eyed remembrance of the surreality of the situation. "I mean, frelling Daleks! Seriously! But she was on board, and in about a week they'd cleared HQ of all the big ones, and Medical was able to get the cure into the atmosphere. Don't think this is the end of the story, though. It isn't. Just give me a second to catch my breath."
It wasn't so much the talking, but the emotional backlash. It had been a rough time, and the short-lived relief between the end of the epidemic and what came next was bitter. She definitely considered topping off the soda with something alcoholic, but kept quiet.
Suicide's numerous mental voices made a return, this time conjuring up a memory of Dienekes cuffing him hard in the back of the head for passing comments about one of the Peers' wives. "Don't be an ass to a citizen," was all his master had said. Judging by Jenni's reaction he had just violated Dienekes' rule, though he wasn't quite sure how.
But now the story had changed, from defense to offense, and he couldn't help paying attention. "Wait, wait, wait," he said, holding up one hand. "Stop the messenger. No, shoot the messenger. There's an alternate universe PPC? Where there's evil versions of us?"
Suicide shook his head, flabbergasted by the thought. What the hell would an evil AU version of himself be like, anyway? A character who didn't commit patricide, or maybe fought for Xerxes? Someone who worked for the [expletive deleted]ing Sues, too. That was a downright creepy thought, and he didn't care if Jenni heard it.
"And it took Daleks to fix everything?" Suicide added after a moment, still clearly trying to process it. "I would think I'd hallucinated this conversation, but I don't see any nine-foot-tall Persians in ugly costumes." He rubbed the back of his head, which was still tender even after several days: when Archir hit people with trees, he didn't mess around. "Granted, I never did make any claims of being in my right mind even without hallucinations, but that . . ." Another headshake. "If you walked into a meeting with a gods-damned pegacorn Sue, you must've been really desperate."
That took guts, he had to admit.
The touch to the back of his head did not escape Jenni's notice, and it snapped her out of her head and back to the present.
"Are you okay? It wouldn't be unusual for the effects of a hit like that to linger quite a while. You tell me if anything's wrong," she instructed. She had automatically lifted a hand to reach out before her own inner voice warned her against overreacting to a casual comment, and it hovered about an inch above the bar top in anticipation of an answer one way or another.
"No worries, I'm fine," Suicide said, dropping his hand as if he'd been scalded and trying to hide a sudden guilty expression. "Like you said, it's lingering for a bit." That didn't seem to reassure Jenni, who apparently shared the modern real-world attitude that brain damage wasn't a normal part of going about your business. "If I start feeling dizzy or seeing anything weirder than usual, I'll have a smoke and sit down for a bit."
He put his hand on top of hers, gently pushing it back down onto the bar top. "Question is, are you all right? I know it's common to get the shakes, thinking about an old war." The words felt strange and awkward in his mouth; this was definitely a more personal conversation than he'd had in a long time, and for a moment he reconsidered that CAD. Still, he remembered the men with their phobos and katalepsis.
OOC: Cont'd on the secondary board . . .
If not, well, I'm seeking permission within the next few days, so no biggie.
that people without permission cannot do is write in the PPC canon. That is it. Everything else we do here is fair game, everything is PPC, you/we are all PPCers. Cool?
Rookie Agents Steven Fontwell and Wallis sneak into the Bleeprin bar, slipping into the darkest corner they could find.
"Dude, I told you, this is going to be cool." Steve muttered, looking towards the bar, complete with all manner of alcohol and blee-products.
"Yub cha wa na?" Wallis asked, scratching his fury head.
"What do you mean 'how do we get it'?" Steve shook his head at his little companion. "Dude, no one can tell the age of an Ewok. You go up there, get the booze and we both drink it. It's a sure fire plan."
Wallis continued his confused look for a moment, before reluctantly nodding. "Yub yub." He said, before making his way towards the bar.
Ray slumps at a little table, one hand clutching a fuzzy ear and the other wrapped around a mug of rootbleep. She mutters something about a vampire infestation in the wrong kingdom.
Aster Corbett walks into the bar, hops up on a stool, and promptly droops all over the counter.
"I can't write this mission report. I don't want to think about The Hidden Secret anymore..."
Her clothes are rather disheveled. It looks like she has been on-mission for days...
...and she's pretty sure they're NOT Anakin's. Or Padme's. Or anyone from the Star Wars universe.
Although Agent Shinra had that sinking feeling that they were intimately close and she wasn't sure she wanted to deal with that sort of fourth wall breaking, metaphysical nonsense right now. In fact, she's pretty sure she just wants something to drink and maybe a hug.
Walking into the bar, she spotted one of the two things she needed. Giving no warning whatsoever, Shinra gave Aster a bear hug from behind when she least expected it.
"My baby novice!"
Krisprolls, South and Whatever walk into the bar, order their Bleepbeers and start getting shitfaced. They then start a peanut fight.
"OW" says Krisprolls as he receives one in the eye.
"That was supposed to be for South" says Whatever.
"WHAT? You'll get one!" says South.
And so on.
A demon sitting near the other three agents quietly sips his bleepka.
... and receives a stray peanut.
The demon turns towards where the peanut came from, and clears his throat.
"Excuse me, but this is a bar. If you want to have a foodfight, go to the cafeteria. As far as I'm aware, at least three of their dishes explode, so it ought to be rather entertaining."
"Thank you." says Krisprolls, who immediately proceeds to fetch said dishes at the Cafeteria to continue the foodfight at the bar.
Whatever is not impressed.