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"I don't care how much fun they think it is," grumbles Robo, "I'm making every one of them clean the watermelon out of the hydraulic press by hand."

The news out of China is slightly odder than usual and it's not like it takes much to set the Action Scientists off on a tangent.

Botherable!

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"What did the newbies do this time?"

"You ever see Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension?" checks Robo, "Some of them were inspired to recreate the scene with a watermelon in a hydraulic press thanks to news out of China."

"....no, but I think that is going onto the list of movies I can't let Angie or Malphast ever get their hands on." Thank gawd Cecil flat out forbade any showings of 'Howard The Duck' at his house.

Howard the Duck is kinda special that way yes.

"It opens with a scientist driving a truck through the sound barrier and then through a mountain," says Robo in what is basically confirmation, "Between the scene with the watermelon and the news that there are exploding melons in China..."

Robo shrugs a little.

"How have you been?"

"...I'd say it's been the usual routine but that'd be wrong." Tyler shrugs. "Summer's coming up, along with my birthday. We're not sure if Toby will want to share my birthday or pick the day he was..."

"...have I told you about Toby?"

"That doesn't sound familiar. Is he your long lost twin brother or what?"

Sharing a birthday and all.

"...Blrh. It is a LONG story. You okay if I just give you a print out from my journal?"

"That'll work," says Robo, "Not something you really want to go over again and again, huh."

"The shortest version is that the worst thing in comic books happened so that the world wouldn't get blown up." Tyler mutters, before jogging upstairs to bring down a cheap paper folder with...well about 16 pages of double spaced recent events summary.

Nearly eaten by a dragon.

It takes Robo longer than usual to read that much writing. He goes back and checks some of the items a few times.

"That's nuts. I'm just making sure you still know that."

"That's just the past three months." He's really, really not looking forward to a summer with his unstable clone.

"It's bad that this is starting to look like the usual thing."

"If you were a comic book I'd say you needed to change publishers," says Robo handing the papers back, "I'd offer downtime at my place but we aren't much better. The last science fair I was at got crashed by a genetically engineered dinosaur that insists he's a time traveller.""

"I got you beat."

"How do you feel about a time-travelling "superhero"," Yes, the kid just did airquotes at Robo. "Who decided to steal a set of encyclopedias from 1999 and download them into his brain with a vacuum tube computer...and is also his own archnemesis villan, named Captain Chronos and The Time Waster, respectively."

"I think that any sort of sensible universe doesn't allow time travel to begin with," says Robo, "On top of that mental interfaces are risky beyond all belief when you're using sensible hardware."

"I think a lot of people with powers back home don't have a lot of common sense." Beat. "You know what, the next time someone asks what my superpower is, I think I'll just tell them 'common sense'."

"The follow up is harder," warns Robo, "It's not like being a genius where you can coast on one or two discoveries for a career."

"Well, I'm getting darn sick of them giving me a pitying look when I say I don't have any." Tyler sighes. "..anyway, I haven't had a chance to train lately. At least not in my world. Used to be, I'd get picked up for a weekend of training on Fridays, but since the alien invasion and cloning thing, that hasn't happened."

"Shoot. Does your mentor or who ever have an answering machine or anything like that?"

"...yeah, he does, come to think of it." Tyler says, sitting up. "...I'll have to ask him what's up."

"Once in a while it's handy to not be from the wired generations," says Robo, "Have you been working up anything new with your equipment lately? It might be nice to have a surprise ready for when he gets back to you."

One problem dealt with on the immediate level and all.

"Well....I've kind of technically tried keeping the Daffy Putty a secret from him..." Though goodness only knows how well THAT has worked out. "...then again, he probably doesn't know Ecto and I mess around with figuring out how to program new settings for the stuff."

"It might even be worse than going at it cold," agrees Robo, "This way he has assumptions and those will mess you up completely."

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