milliways_bar | (no subject)

Faith comes into the bar in high spirits, dressed casually - she's been training - but still wearing that somewhat ridiculous circlet in her hair. It comes off as soon as she's in the bar, and she goes up to Bar to get a cup of coffee.

This procured, she goes over to read the notice board, and sees Kaylee's note.

The coffee cup drops from suddenly-nerveless fingers, and Faith, staring in pale, wide-eyed horror, doesn't even notice the waitrats that scamper to clean up the mess.

River and Simon. Taken. Her friends - her good friends - in terrible danger.

The horror gives way, slowly, to the cold, killing fury of a very angry Slayer, and she turns on her heel and stalks over to Bar, acquiring paper and pen and writing a very brief note, which will be delivered to whichever member of Serenity's crew happens to come into the bar next.

If I can help, I will. - Faith

Then she gets another drink - whiskey this time - and stalks over to a table with a carefully blank expression on her face.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well, my initial state of sanity was sort of debatable to begin with if you ask most people from my initial universe, but my friends and I used to speculate about this kind of thing when I was in college," Ray says blithely. "The existence of as many potential alternate universes as there are potential alternate outcomes to any given situation was postulated in a Larry Niven short story called All The Myriad Ways. In Niven's work, the discovery of the existence of all these alternates caused widespread societal breakdown as people assumed that their particular choices didn't matter because some other version of them, somewhere, was choosing something else- so they did whatever the hell they wanted, or went nuts. I've always assumed since reading that story that my actions were the ones that mattered, regardless of what any other me might or might not be doing, or how other universes might be structured. It helps, in situations like that."

"In Andrew's reality, I'm living on the Cleveland Hellmouth with a high-school principal," Faith says, thoughtfully, after considering this for a while. "I think I like my reality better."

"I think Egon has some relatives near Cleveland," Ray says after some thought. "Or in Ohio, anyway. I've never been to Spengler Labs."

"I hope it's not on a Hellmouth in your world."

"Not likely. Most of Egon's relatives don't accept the existence of the supernatural as a valid field of scientific endeavor. They would if it was as obvious as a Hellmouth in the vicinity, I think."

"You'd be surprised," Faith says dryly. "Hellmouth's underground, you know. They build cities on them, Sunnydale and Cleveland and Westport, Conneticut that I know of and more I'm sure that I don't, and people generally speaking have no clue. They walk around in a haze of blissful stupidity, writing vampire attacks off as barbecue fork stabbings and gangs on PCP, and until the Hellmouth opens and the giant worm demon with a half-dozen heads pops out, there's really no reason for them to think their town is any different at all."

"You haven't met the Spenglers," Ray says dryly. "If it was in their vicinity they'd wind up studying it, if only to keep their experimental results consistent. They're picky people."

Faith snorts.

"Well, fair enough, I suppose. Probably you'd know if your world had Hellmouths. Probably it doesn't at all. I hope it doesn't, anyway, as it sounds like your life is weird enough."

"My world has a hole permanently burned in the barrier between the prime material plane and the ectoplasmic entity planar interfaces thanks to the existence of the Shandor Building," Ray says. "I'm probably going to be spending the rest of my life dealing with the fallout and training up kids to handle the mess afterwards until someone can figure out how to seal the breach. Plus I have my suspicions about the territory off the southern tip of Brooklyn, but all my readings indicate that the likely weak point is somewhere a good distance out into the water and quite a ways up in the air, so I can't actually get in close enough to be certain."

"............right," Faith says, weakly. "Uhm. Ow."

Beat.

"I think you win."

Ray smiles a little. "It could be worse," he says. "The animated continuum's weak spot off Coney Island was used by a bunch of cultists to summon up Great Cthulhu, plus that world had the doomsday door under Manhattan. Literally. As in 'do not open until'."

"......urgh. Uhm. My old world had...demons with paralyzing snot. And Santa Claus. Who was a demon."

Ray nods. "We never met Santa Claus," he says. "Just the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future- but that was the animated continuum again."

Faith facepalms.

"You totally win."