milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Mike isn't so much seated at Bar as he is slumped over her. He hates days like today. You know the kind, where what you've been putting off all week just has to be done.

The concern du jour is the lack of writing on this week's Happy Hour schedule. There's just no amount of squinting that's going to make writing magically appear on the calendar before him, and he knows it.

It's just unfair the way the universe works, you know? That procrastination can't continue indefinitly.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Woah! You could be rebuilt! Someone had the technology! You realize I might be forced to make the bananananananananananana noise at you anytime I see you running, right?"

Cal starts laughing.

"I go running every morning, man, feel free. I could use a soundtrack."

He wrinkles his nose.

"Mornings happen to other people. I'm more of a late-afternoon sort of person. But, okay...so...you were hurt and someone fixed you by reshuffling and you want to know if the reset actually reset or if you're like...bleeding internally or something....yes?"

Cal hesitates.

"I think if something lethal had gone wrong, I'd know by now. I was thinking more about older damage. You know." He forces some lightness into his tone. "Dead brain cells from too much partying, that kind of thing."

"How would you know?"

"Yesterday I remembered what DNA stood for," Cal says. There are a couple other example of his memory having surprised him, but he feels this by itself is sufficient evidence.

"Did it like, come to you in the middle of the night after you spent all day trying to remember? Because I hate it when that happens."

Cal chuckles. "Nope. Just - outta nowhere. I didn't even know I knew that."

Well, he couldn't skip every class.

His brow furrows.

"And you think this is because of the reshuffling?"

"Maybe," Cal says. "I mean, I haven't turned into a super-genius or anything, but it makes sense. If I got reset to what I'm supposed to be, without scars or anything like that, it would make sense that internal damage would get fixed too. Which, I guess, means my memory's a little better?" He's not really sure how the brain works.

"Works for me! Though...like...if you never knew it before how can you be sure that knowing science stuff is what you were supposed to be?"

Cal blinks. "What?"

"Well like, you said that you didn't know DNA before, so why would fixing your brain make you suddenly know it now? You know?"

"Oh. Yeah." Cal considers that. "There were also a couple other things I remembered that I think I heard or read somewhere and had forgotten. I must have heard it in class or something? And maybe I can access stuff like that better than I could before?"

He's pretty sure it still makes sense.

"Heh, how much partying did you do, Dude?"

There's an uneasy pause before Cal says,

"Too much."

And that'll be just about enough of that, and Cal knows a thing or two about avoiding awkward subjects, so he continues very casually,

"I just hope I don't start remembering things I don't want to remember. You know, like seeing my parents having sex or something." He makes a face.

"HA! One of the great advantages of being adopted is never having to see your parents get it on. Closest I ever got was walking in on Splinter cleaning himself, and that was more awkward than anything else."

Yeah...the narration isn't sure where that came from either.

Cal laughs. "Yeah, I'm probably safe, too. I don't think my parents ever did. Well, I mean. Once. Obviously. But otherwise . . ." He shakes his head.

Whether Mike wins this round of Spot The Dysfunctional Family or misinterprets this as typical offspring denial is up to him.

"Why do all humans say that? Like...there's just no possible way for the people who made them to want to have actually made them? I'd be like, happy as a clam to know that my father had someone in his life that made him happy."

"Oh, mine probably did," Cal says with a shrug. "It just wasn't Mother. We just don't like to think of our parents like that. I think it's like, a biological thing."

He's starting to look slightly unsettled. Parent sex. Ugh.

Mike holds up his hands.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not some sort of parent humping pervert or anything, it's just that should I ever walk in on something like that I won't be like..."

He pulls a face of abject horror.

"It wouldn't be something I'd stick around to watch, but I wouldn't be like Raph and try to poke out my eyes with a set of sai or something."

"Oh, sure, you say that now," Cal says, complete with an abject failure at a straight face.

Seriously, either he used to be a lot better at that or people were just easier to fool.

Mike looks appropriately taken aback.

"Sir are you calling me a liar?"

SHOCK!

Cal considers, tilting his head and adding an extra moment of musing silence just for dramatic purposes.

"Nah. Lying's something you do on purpose. I think you're probably in the clear. For now."

He settles back to his slumping across Bar's top.

"Oh, well that's okay then. So okay, answer me this then. Did you get your reshuffling done here at Milliways? Or was this back in The City?"