milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Belar's been outside for a while this morning, going over each of the places that he's been told someone vanished from. There've been puckers and ripples left in the already admittedly weird texture of space and time, but trying to trace them to their source, even for him, is like trying to find the flame that left a particular burn scar. It's maddening, and it wouldn't be happening on his home world or if someone who was one of his people numbered among the missing- he'd be able to tell. But this place... meh, unless it happens directly on one of his mountains, he's not going to be able to run it back to the source.

It's enough to drive a god nuts, which is why he's in such a foul temper as he storms inside and puts up his sign.

ANSWERING PRAYERS
BACK IN 15 MINUTES

THE INVESTIGATION INTO THE MISSING CONTINUES
PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU KNOW OF ANY MORE VANISHINGS

YES, I ALREADY TALKED TO CAPTAIN RYAN

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Knox waits patiently for the god to finish his work, sipping his morning coffee.

The sign decrements to zero and its top half vanishes in a spark of blue light. "Yo," says Belar. "What up, my honky?"

Amazingly, neither Aldur nor UL appears to smack Belar in the head.

... that will come later.

Knox, not being attuned to street talk of any kind (and certainly not that of the 21st century) sort of stares blankly.

"I wanted to see if I could add anything to the investigation. I don't know if you have everything I do, but I want to help."

Belar picked it up in Canada. Take it for what it's worth, which is to say not very much. "Okay," he says. "Suzi Darley's been gathering the data, and Lan Mandragoran, Elda the griffin, Sooraya Qadir, and myself have been trying to pry whatever information we can out of the landscape where it's happened- that's the security people I've spoken to about it most recently, anyway. I can tell you what we've got, but why don't you fill me in on your end first."

"Well, I have a short list of victims - Ray Stantz, Sarge Wells, Spoon, possibly Lilly Kane, and someone named Optimus Prime. I've also ruled myself out, since my own unscheduled trip happened inside." He pauses. "WE got sent to Bahamut. Don't ask." A quick glance at his cane will have to suffice. "I know it's been fairly random, that people seem to be going back in time, and that invariably people also manage to get back here, sooner or later." In ray's case, much later.

"I'm also glad that you have a team working on this. The people I talked to till now seemed a little out of the loop."

"You left out River Tam," says Belar. "She wound up in Sergeant Wells' world five hundred years before her own time. That's more than anybody, even Optimus Prime. He wound up in Oliver Cromwell's time, from what they tell me. Then he spent four hundred years pretty much hibernating, even if it's not exactly the same for a robot as it is for a snake."

Bears sleep in winter, but it's nothing like the same as real hibernation. When your brother is Issa, you use the correct terminology.

"Also, you left out Suzi Darley and her friend Deitmar. That just happened last night. Captain Ryan came over to ask me about it. I've been over the spot where she vanished and I can't find so much as a trace of sorcery or magic. Just that somebody pulled really, really hard on the space-time continuum and folded it hard enough to punt her into a place I can't even reach."

Robot? Weirder and weirder. "Well, it's hard to include someone I don't know, in River Tam's case. And I figured, since you talked to Captain Ryan, that you knew that piece." Knox thinks for a second. This is just so far outside his usual line of thought that it invariably gives him a headache. Good thing he's still on Tylenol for his leg.

"That implies some kind of really advanced science. Involving time travel. Have you talked to any of the local time travelers here?"

"I haven't," says Belar. "I don't know if any of the others have. Fooling around with linear time gives me a headache- it's one of the really few things we don't screw with in my world."

"Let me suggest you talk with Sarah Jane Smith. She's connected with time travel, and she's also a reporter. Never hurts to have two of us helping out." He smiles as if somehow that's all it takes to solve things, and then gives a description of her. "If you don't see her, look for James Bond. They just got married.

"I didn't even believe time travel was possible till I got here. But I think you have the right idea. It sounds like it just makes trouble." Or at least it does here and in the movies.

"Oh, it's possible, but the thing is that it's possible for somebody in my position to exist in two times at once," Belar says. "That kind of thing puts a really unhealthy level of stress on the fabric of creation. One living Will isn't supposed to be in two times at once- it distorts things. A lot. It's okay to fool with objects along those lines, but people and gods... not so much."

"Er, yeah." He thinks he grasps it. Belar's a god, and gods can do stuff. But the smart ones don't. Still, it's a new idea and not one he's ready to play with. "Besides, I bet you really don't want to meet yourself."

"It'd be boring. Ever tried to have a conversation where neither of you have nothing new to say? Like that," says Belar. "Anyway, I'll ask around. Thanks for the suggestion, though."

"Hey, even if what happened to me isn't the same, I don't want to see it or anything like it happen to anyone. And I'm hearing some real horror stories." Figuratively.

"I haven't really had the chance to talk to most of these people," Belar says. "What sort of stuff are we looking at here?"

"How about a man who got stuck in another world for 47 years? And managed to become immortal along the way? Which isn't the single worst thing - I assume you're immortal, and my lady is, as well. But the combination...yikes." He thinks. "I think I heard that Spoon was sent to ancient Greece. Or was that Wells? Either way, not fun." It's a very limited data set to draw conclusions from. This would never stand a chance of being used as news. But it's great hearsay.

Belar coughs, and has the grace to look embarrassed. "That first one was sort of me," he says. "Not the getting stuck elsewhere, I mean. The immortal thing. I meant to tell him, but he was gone before I could get hold of him."

"You made him..." Weirder and weirder, and then, for a change, weirder. "He was on your world? I tell you, RAy can't do anything without taking the strangest route possible."

And that tiny voice inside Knox's head that is just a little jealous of someon who can be immortal, that voice that really does want to be with Rapuznel forever, is mercifully silent.

"It's kind of a long story. He's friends with Garion- really close friends, like the kind of friend that'd donate a kidney if somebody needed it, y'know? They've known each other for years, and Ray's in and out of Garion's place at Riva almost as often as Garion's kids're in and out of the Firehouse. Garion sorta comes from this whole family of sorcerers, and where I come from, sorcerers live pretty much forever unless somebody kills 'em or they take steps of their own to end things. Garion's wife's a Dryad princess, and they live as long as their trees. I wouldn't say immortality's common back on Gara, but it's not as if it's all that weird, either. I mean, everybody knows Garion's grandfather's been around for a couple thousand years now." Belar shrugs. "I don't do that kind of thing, generally, but the petition got addressed to me and Dad, and Dad finally said it was okay- and trust me, dude, you do not want to cross my father once he's made up his mind about something."

"Hokay. So it was just Ray having Ray's luck. That man...I'd say they should make a movie about him, only they did long before I met him."

Belar smiles a little. "Stories leak," he says. "People do what they can with 'em when they find 'em."

"In Ray's case, they didn't even come close." Yes, Knox so needs to do a profile of Ray for the paper here.

"Anyway, that's all I know. I'll make to get word to you if I hear anything else, and if I see Sarah Jane, I'll ask her to talk to you, as well."

"I don't know of any more," the Donighal says once the sign and Knox have both gone, "but that doesn't necessarily mean there haven't been any." He sounds a lot like Belar looked. "And none of them have been under a time limit, except Ray if you hadn't gotten to him first. Dare I hope you found something potentially useful?"

"I wish," says Belar. "All I know is somebody pulled on space and time like they were drawing a bowstring to the point of folding the bow in half, and then released it. Suzi and Deitmar're still in wherever they got folded to, and it's someplace I can't even touch."

"Yikes! I'd offer to go out back and see if a different set of senses can follow the trail, but if our mystery abductor(s) can pull off something like that, I'm not sure I want to risk being around them." Yes, he pronounced the parentheses. How, you ask? Very carefully.

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