milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"Morning, Bar," says Ray as he comes through the door, dripping and in uniform. The two tend to go hand in hand. "Sorry about the mess, but if I attempt an ectoplasmic decontamination at home I'm never going to hear the end of it from Dr. Venkman. Can I get whatever you've got in the way of coffee that wouldn't so much wake the dead as just make them stir in their sleep? Thanks."

[tinytag: Nico di Angelo]

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".... am I going to need Third Rail when I hear about this?"

"...Something stronger."

"Bar? how about that Tei Ceti sasparbeer? You know, the stuff that tastes like a stronger alcoholic cousin of Barq's?"

"ooh. I don't think I know that one yet," says Ray, and pushes what's left of his Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs aside as the stuff arrives. "Okay. Lay it on me."

Two nicely dark glass bottles appear with stylized galaxies on the label and alien script.

And they do indeed taste like the alcoholic cousin of Barq's rootbeer.

"Mhmm..right. So. 200 some years ago, in her world, the entire earth is two factions. America's bought just about half the world for resources, and Communist China the same. They start fighting each other, and somehow, both leaders think that dropping nukes on each other is a grrreaaaat plan. Someplace called Vault-Co has built bomb shelters capable of housing a thousand people 'indefinitely'. People think that they're there to help save humanity."

"China? Really? Well, I guess that makes more sense than the Soviets," Ray says. "I get the feeling there's more, though."

"When has it ever been just that." Swig. "Ellen grew up in one of the Vaults. Vault 101. And up until about 2 months ago for her, she thought no one ever entered or left, and that the outside world was unlivable."

"She found out different. And that she and her father had been born outside the Vault. Sometime and several other abandoned vaults, people who think they're superheroes, aliens, mercenaries, and atom-bomb worshiping freaks later.. She found out each of the Vaults were experiments."

Ray blinks a few times. "Really," he says. "Wow. And I thought Tuskeegee was bad..."

"There 231 vaults that she knows of out there from rumor and record. Ray, one of those vaults had an experiment that...."

"...I don't suppose you would know what the word Reavers would mean, would you?"

".... I've met Simon Tam," Ray finally says.

Actually, he's read his world's book Serenity, Joss Whedon's one successful entertainment venture- the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie tanked horribly. But he's met the Tams, too, and most of the Serenity crew here. So. Yeah.

...Yeah. Tyler's seen the movie and a few other of Whedon's works.

"Ellen's was just an experiment in 'let us see what happens when we give one person absolute power and tell him the Vault is never going to open again'." Fairly benign, as these things go. ...for a given value of benign.

"It's to the point where I'm wishing I could find a ghost of someone who thought this was a good idea and get to either bitch the hell out of them, or get them into a trap and bring them to spend eternity in the containment unit."

"You know," says Ray, "when I was a kid, there was this TV movie- The Day After. United States versus Russia, nuclear weapons, no holds barred. It gave people nightmares. Might've been one of the major factors in people not believing President Reagan's claims that nuclear war was winnable. From the sound of things that kind of scenario might've been something of a mercy."

"I am totally in agreement with you on that." Tyler replies. "...so it shouldn't be of any surprise to you that I try to help her out in...my regular job's uniform as often as possible."

"Good for you," Ray says. "Let me know if there's anything I can loan you for the trips. It doesn't sound like the kind of place Romana would want me to go on my own, or I'd offer."

It's a few minutes of thought before he answers that one.

"Ghost traps. Most of the other offensive weapons I've already got, and there isn't a decontamination area big enough for Ecto to clean off in 'bot mode."

"I can do that," Ray says. "I'll have a few ready for you the next time I come in."

"Thanks, you know the secret door to leave em in, right?"

"Sure do," Ray says. "Good luck with them if you have to use them."

"I'll probably need it, and speaking of luck..." Another bottle of Tei Ceti Sasparbeer appears. "What was the big bad halloween hoodoo this year?"

Ray runs one hand over his face. "Long story made very, very short?" he says. "Egon bought a sealed book at an antiques auction. The seal was holding the Horsemen of the Apocalypse in."

.

.

.

Eyetwitch.

"...you know. I really thought he had learned after the incident with Miss Eartha Kitt and the clay."

"In his defense, he's not the one who broke the seal," Ray says. "But he's still got a restraining order against him going within a hundred yards of any more book auctions without written permission from the Defense Department."

"...who, may I ask, broke the seal?"

"We had some visitors from Milliways," Ray says. "Dr. Song didn't realize we had rules about no opening musty old antiquated volumes without running a PKE scan first."

"..don't know a Dr. Song." But he's guessing whoever they were, they're VERY sorry for what they did.

"Shame Egon got the bad end for it. You'd think they'd want him finding the books that have PKE signatures to get them out of circulation and out of the wrong hands."

"It's only Egon who's got the restraining order," Ray says. "Nobody said Winston or I can't go shopping instead. Egon's the only one of us who's demonstrated the ability to actually utilize anything in these books."