milliways_bar | (no subject)

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One of these days Ray is going to get a good night's sleep again, but that would require him not being subjected to sudden and massive doses of Perspective. Like, for instance, coming in from out back yesterday and realizing I just had an extended conversation with WHO? Oh, he's dealt with Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, and he's fought eschatological deities in multiple different universes, and he's been coming to Milliways long enough to have met several of the Endless; he's used to Great Big Things of Great Big Power. It's just the part where his survival instincts finally show up after the fact and inform him that yes, you, the teeny weeny cosmically insignificant little ant at the base of the El, trying to understand all of Chicago (so to speak)- you, little ant, just had words with something that literally thinks on a multiversal scale, and it seemed to actually pay attention to you.

Unicron sorta made an impact. It doesn't make for a good night's rest. Ray's gonna be wearing the Mr. Stay-Puft slippers today along with the cargo pants and the Ghostbusters company T-shirt, and trying really, really hard not to think about the implications of being the unofficial human ambassador to the Machine Order of Life.

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Poor Ray.

Maybe Ray would like a Wolf?

A Wolf who managed to sneak a Hunter into the Bar!

A Hunter who is a few years old now. And looks like this. (http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v77/sunreon/Wolf/Icons/?action=view&current=Yotam__2004_by_gilad.jpg)

They're at the bar, eating breakfast. Which, of course, means bacon.

"Ray!" Wolf waves at him. With much Wolf-like enthusiasm.

Oh! Yes, that would do nicely.

Ray looks up from where he's getting his breakfast, which means Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs, and grins. "Oh, hey! Hi, Wolf! Gosh, it's been ages- good to see you again!" He looks down at Wolf's companion and adds, "Both of you! Hi there."

Hunter: *sniff* . . . *want* *reach* "Mmm!"

Wolf: "I'm not sure if you've ever been introduced. This is Hunter, my pup." And there's that proud BEAM of fatherhood.

Hunter still wants to check out the Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. Because, one: chocolate. And two: Frosted Sugar Bombs. There's something in every child's cellular structure that makes them desire the most sugary, unhealthy cereal imagineable.

"Yeah, I don't think we have," says Ray. "Hi, Hunter! I'm Ray. Nice to meet you." Ray likes kids. Granted, his own has a fifteen-foot wheelbase and an acceleration time that approaches that of a Pontiac Firebird, but still.

Hunter leans forward, sniffing for the cereal.

WANT.

"Rrrrrrrrrrray," he parrots. Cause it makes people happy when you repeat their names. Or whatever it was they said to you. I can haz seereeul naow?

Small children spill things, and Ray's cereal has milk in it.

"Bar?" Ray says. "Can I have a small cup of dry chocolate frosted Sugar Bombs for Hunter, please?" He looks to Wolf. "Would that be okay? I mean, can I give them to him?"

Wolf sniffs.

Ah, Wolf. Not knowing the dangers of the Earthly creation that is children's cereal.

"Sure, why not?"

Ray sees nothing wrong with this!

Ray has the survival instincts of an eggplant!

"Here you go, kiddo," Ray says, passing the plastic cup over to Hunter.

There is small childish glee. And "gimme" hands at the cup.

Gnom gnom gnom.

Waaaait for it. Waaaaaaait for it.

Wolf munches a piece of bacon.

"I'd ask what you've been up to, Ray, but I know it would take longer to explain than it took to happen!"

"Probably," Ray agrees. "Most recently, I've got a ghost ship that my friends and I have to get home. I've also been training my nephews as apprentices. And blowing things up in Riva, but you probably knew that already. Garion reinforced my part of the Citadel but I still get thrown through the wall fairly often."

"No kidding. What WERE you working on yesterday?"

Waaaaaait for it.

It's working its way into his metabolism now...

"Pyrochemistry. I was working with sulfur and charcoal and a couple of additives from these very interesting Drasnian fungi to make stuff that'd blow up with enough force to make a boat's paddles turn without having to rely on wind or water," says the blissfully oblivious Ray.

"A motor?"

Did the boat that had the Golden Fish have a motor? The mun can't remember. Probably not.

"Hunh. So that's what all that was. Not to mention the smell."

BZING! Houston, we have liftoff.

""DADDY! DADDY! WHEEEEEEEEEE!""
"WHEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Off he goes.

"Yeah, pretty m-"

Oh.

Oh boy.

"Um," says Ray. "He's... never had chocolate before, has he."

Cue the small, tailed child running around and under tables.

"Chocolate, yes. Is this some sort of demon-chocolate?"

"No! Well, I mean, it's got a hundred percent of the US recommended daily allowance of caffeine, but it's not like he ate a full serving!"

"And just what exactly is caffeine?!"

"EEHEEHEE!" ""GO FAST!""

"It's the stuff that makes coffee or tea wake you up," Ray says. "Looks like it woke him up a lot. I hope it wears off soon..."

...

"Oh dear."

"I, uh... guess I'd better go try and chase him down, huh."

He shrugs.

"Yes, no? He knows better than to leave the bar proper, and not to mess with anything that appears too scary or smells wrong. And I don't think you'd be able to catch him, honestly."

Is that a hint of a proud grin? "Wolves are fast."

"You're probably right," Ray admits. "My nephews can usually outrun me, and they're only human. I wouldn't have a prayer."

He watches Hunter zipping about like a neutron through a breeder reactor.

"Nice set of lungs he's got, too."

"Aaaayup."

Chompity chomp. Back to breakfast, then.

Breakfast is good, yes.

"One of these days," says Ray as Hunter races by at the edge of his field of vision, "I ought to bring Francis by for you guys to meet. He's a dog, but he's made of metal."

"Why would you want a dog made of metal?"

It makes no sense!

"Oh, I didn't make him," Ray says. "He's from another world where the man in charge of the whole country decided that people needed not to have emotions, because emotions caused wars. Owning dogs was dangerous because people would either love or hate real dogs, so he replaced the dogs that his police used with metal ones instead. And made sure that none of them were friendly enough for anyone to like- they were just made to chase down anybody who gave his police trouble."

*blink*

. . .

"That's terrible!"

"No kidding," says Ray. "It was a really messed-up situation. The friend of mine who gave Francis to me used to be one of the police there, but he changed his mind and decided that he had to fight back. He brought me the metal dog when it attacked him, and I had Francis made to be more like a normal dog, and John went back to his world to put things right again."

"We may have an invasion going on," the Donighal says without preamble.

"I already encountered Unicron and I have no idea if the Prime in the Bar has access to the Matrix of Leadership," Ray says, although it's a little muffled by the chocolate cereal he hasn't swallowed yet. "I'll ask him when I see him."

Michael may not have Tommy's exact Cereal-English translation skills, but Linguistic Genius can work wonders. "...Unicron? The planet-eater? Yikes." He considers. "Yeah, if we have a Prime, that would be a good question to ask him. But no hurry; if the Chaosbringer gets impatient to take a bite of this place, I can go discuss matters with him. I was thinking more about the Joker's Daughter. And/or Roxanne, and/or any other such intruders."

"Unicron seems to think this place is great for his overall serenity or something," Ray says. "He said it was soothing to find proof that the multiverse eventually gets destroyed. Which makes this officially the weirdest Zen garden ever."

Then he scratches his head, expression sobering. "You've been talking to Knox, huh? I thought at first it was some sort of temportal distortion, but if it is, its selectiveness is really bizarre. And I've been traveling with Romana long enough to know bizarre when I see it."

"...Yeah, that may officially put the cherry on the Hot Fucked-Up Sundae that is Milliways. Assuming anything can."

Michael's expression also goes sober. "I actually heard about it first from Harry Wells, the ex-SAS werewolf, but I spoke to Knox, and it was interesting to say the least.*Whatever or whoever it is, it only seems to be affecting memories, not actual history; the mysterious Roxanne, for instance, apparently didn't insert herself into the records of the Seventh Doctor's adventures, only into Ace's recollections of those adventures."

* Still is, in fact.

Oh, boy, would both Wells and Ryan do the 'bzuh?' face if either of them heard Wells being described as ex-Special Forces. Still, one can understand where that impression might come from.
"Huh," says Ray. "Okay, that's interesting. That's very interesting. I-"

And then he stops, and he frowns some more- and slaps the table. "Holy Heisenberg! I knew there was something weird about President Winston's daughter- I thought she'd come in from a splinter timeline, and that was why I was partially remembering her..."

"...She didn't exactly make the news any of the times I visited your world; then again, I was short on opportunities to read the paper. Anyway, that sounds like a third confirmed sighting, and in the immortal words of Auric Goldfinger, once is happenstance; twice is coincidence; thrice is enemy action. I only hope it's just one enemy, not three."

"President Winston hasn't got a daughter," Ray says. "Not in my timeline, anyway. He's got two sons."

"...yikes. As Bob would say, this is bad. Very bad."

"Yeah," says Ray. "Worst retcon ever."

It's up there, anyway. Retconning the Donighal's lack of narrative, when Ray mentioned the President's daughter, into So that's the form she took to fit with Knox' warning* is also pretty bad, but the narrative seems to be doing it anyway.

"It's up there, anyway. And at least Crisis and Man of Steel and Hawkworld were undertaken with good intentions."

"Yeah, let's not start on Hawkworld," Ray says. "The continuity there was so messed up to start with a colony of spiders fed entirely on ants that'd fed on honey laced with LSD could've done a better job putting it back together. Anyway. That's what we're dealing with, so far as I can see."

The original Hawkworld mini was fine, in the narrative's opinion (and the Donighal's); it was only when DC editors decreed, in re the ongoing series, that Katar and Shayera had now never been to Earth until after Invasion! that the dominoes started falling toward continuity meltdown.

"The question is — no, the questions are: what is she, really? what does she want? can she be stopped, and if so, how?"

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