milliways_bar | (no subject)

Well, why not ask your boyfriend? He's currently up in the rafters, applying the 'mend' part of his function to the roof, but that shouldn't be a problem.

She would, if she had any indication that he was up there. As it is Dani's focus is more on the ground-level part of the bar right now.

That's okay. When Enzo takes a moment's break and sets down his hammer, his attention turns to ground level as well.

"Dani!"

Annnnd now we see why allowing oneself to be startled up there is a bad idea, as he's hanging head-down by legs locked around the rafter.

Please pardon the interruption as we take a moment for ~~station identification~~ not-quite hysterical laughter.

"What are you doing up there, Enzo?"

Although he's positively giddy at seeing her (or maybe just from being upside-down), he manages to suppress it enough to adopt an expression of wounded dignity. "Officially, or right now?" he deadpans.

"Hmmm...both!"

She's incorrigible.

"Officially, roof repairs. Right now, thinking how a little help would be nice."

"Sorry." Hint taken, Dani transforms and flies up to the rafter, grabbing Enzo's hands on the way up so that she can pull him upright along the way.

"So what happened to the roof that it needs repairing?"

"Everything. The apocalypse they're calling it. Everything was crashing..."

Suddenly, his composure fails and he grabs her in a crushing hug.

"The Door went buggy for a lot of people," he whispers. "I didn't see you since it started happening, I thought..."

There's moisture on his cheek.

"Gosh, Enzo, I..."

She hugs him back; it's the only thing she can do, at the moment.

Even though she knows she has no reason to, Dani can't help but feel a little guilty. Here she was on the other side of her door, safe and sound, no idea what was going on in Milliways. But from the sound of things, Enzo had been here for most - if not all - of it.

After a nano or two, he sniffles and pulls back, but still keeps hold of her hands. He needs to touch her right now.

"Sorry. I've been trying not to worry too much, but... you know. Everything's been so random lately... I thought Milliways was gone for good until I found my own Door again. It moved to the cafeteria."

"Really?"

She blinks.

"Mine showed up in Danny's bedroom this afternoon."

"I guess a lot of stuff got shook up."

At least Danny's off at college. Which raises the question...

"What were you gonna 'borrow'?"

"Danny's copy of The Hobbit. Lancer's got us reading it for class right now and I left my copy at school."

"Any good?"

"Actually, yeah. It is pretty good," Dani admits. "It's about a group of dwarves trying to get back their treasure that was stolen by a dragon, and they end up recruiting a hobbit to join their group because a wizard told them that he was a burglar - which he isn't."

"Why'd he tell them that, then?"

"Beats me. Probably because he just wanted to meddle in Bilbo - that's the hobbit's name, Bilbo Baggins - in Bilbo's life or something, get him to do something more than sit around in his hobbit-hole all day."

"Wizards. Go figure."

He smiles at her, feeling the world right itself around him.

"So," he says, reluctantly taking one of his hands back just long enough to scrub the tears off his face, "I guess you'll want to debrief me on the situation here, huh?"

Notice how he didn't even turn 'debrief' into a double entendre. He is being Very Good.

"You guess right."

Duly noted. He is being Very Good.

"So...what triggered the apocalypse here?"

"According to Claudia, Ray Stantz was doing an experiment and got a number wrong."

And that's certainly not uncomfortably close to home or anything.

Dani facepalms, and wishes she weren't so unsurprised.

"That's it?"

"That's what she says. And that he was holed up working on it the whole time, so he missed the whole thing."

Scientists.

No kidding, scientists. And Dani would know; she lives with two of them.

"So Ray unknowingly triggered the apocalypse...what happened then?"

"Well, first there was this weird feeling like the whole dimension was minimized and then restored. Then explosions and earthquakes started happening, and the sky turned red and the lake turned into blood... I'm probably getting this out of order, I'd have to check my notes... and that chat thing the trolls run went down for a while, and people's Doors started acting funny, and Bar started getting orders wrong, and all sorts of... artifacts, I guess, started turning up out of nowhere."