milliways_bar | (no subject)

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The trip home from Brazil was pretty short for Shephard. Having a teleporting boat does that. Thing is, boats generally have to stay in water even if they're teleporting, and there's no body of water near the Greenbrier that's big enough to handle the Borealis just at the moment, so they teleported back home to an extra deep part of the Cheat River not far from Rowlesburg. Shephard took the opportunity to stop off and visit his family, among other things. Family being what it is, he got loaded down with stuff to take with him to the Greenbrier, including several books salvaged from the remains of a bookmobile someone found wrecked in a mountain gully.

He's not entirely sure why his mother thought he'd like some of these things. Maybe he's supposed to give them to Freeman?

Well, it doesn't much matter, the Bar grabbed him when he stepped through the Greenbrier door with the sack of supplies over his shoulder and Mrs. Wilson the houndeye at his heels. He lets out an exasperated cuss under his breath and makes his way over to one of the tables to check some of the haul out.

Twenty minutes later he is a lot more interested in this weird-ass The House On The Borderland shit than he'd expected to be. But he could still be bothered without anybody getting hurt.

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Clint's walking across to an armchair, coffee in one hand and a 2011 copy of Bowhunt America tucked under his arm.

He catches sight of the... creature... and slows, stopping when he realizes he recognizes its owner(?).

It takes him a long moment to dig out his name. "Shephard, right?"

Shephard glances up, sticks the nearest available napkin in the book, and nods. "'n you're... Barton," he says. "Used to be 75th. Long time no see- Mrs. Wilson, you make nice now."

The creature, which is about the size of a Labrador but shaped like a Christmas ham with the wide end covered in a compound eye that resembles a wet blackberry, has vivid blue stripes across its back. Also three legs, and no visible mouth until it stands on its hind leg to get a better look at the newcomer; the mouth is up between its forelimbs, more or less.

"Don't mind her none. She don't bite nor bark less'n I tell her to."

If she were a dog, Clint would pet her. He doesn't, but neither does he back up -- instead he watches, curious.

"Hi," he tells her, with the faint awkwardness of someone who isn't really a pet person. He looks to Shephard. "You got more aliens than just hostiles?"

"Got a good two-thirds of an alien ecosystem moved in'n pulled a rabbits-in-Australia on the Earth critters out there," says Shephard as Mrs. Wilson returns to all threes. "I ain't seen dog nor coyote nor wolf sign nowheres in a good couple years now, but these little fuckers're out there doin' the same shit you'd see any'a those species doin'. This one came around when I was on a hunt 'bout a year'n a half back. Wasn't but the size of a football then. Took her home'n figured I'd tame her, see how it worked out. She ain't half bad as a gaze hound, but her sense of smell's shit."

"Huh. What's there left to hunt?" He tilts his head towards the seat at Shephard's table.

Shephard leans back a bit and pushes the chair out with one foot.

"Bullsquid's edible, long as you don't mind soakin' the meat in its own venom for about a week first'n then smokin' it real slow. Panthereyes're nasty bastards you don't want hangin' 'round human territory nohow. Those ain't as common, though. Mostly it's those'n other alien species, tell you the truth. I ain't got the heart to take down an Earth critter that's lasted as long as this if I c'n avoid it. The oogieboogies might or might not end up bein' edible but I ain't about to cry over killin' somethin' that God didn't never intend to have on His good green Earth in the first place."

He glances at Mrs. Wilson and adds, "Some of 'em come in useful, though. Ain't much sense in killin' those if I don't got to."

Clint pulls it out the rest of the way, and sits, setting down his magazine. "Yeah, that's why I asked. You don't want to help finish anything off, but for some reason I don't see you having an over-abundance of peanut butter and tofu. You farming things?"

"Yep. Paid us a couple visits to a couple of the ol' USDA seed'n germ repositories," Shephard says. "Combine didn't destroy 'em all. We got a shitload of agricultural seeds from Geneva, New York, and a metric fucking shitload from Fort Collins- seeds, cuttings, animal plasm, you fuckin' name it. Ain't had much opportunity to thaw the critter sperm'n such out yet, though. Most of that ain't gon' help 'til we find ourselves females to carry the end result. We're workin' on it. Gonna be goin' up to Svalbard 'n tryin' to crack open the Doomsday Vault once it gits warm enough to make it reasonable."

He's the one who thought of the old seed repositories in the first place and brought them to Ms. Vance's attention. There might be just a bit of satisfaction in his tone.

"We trap a shitload of the other alien critters, too. Ain't much point in hunting headcrab or chumtoad if we c'n snare the things instead."

Clint takes a drink of his coffee as he considers this, the nods.

"Your book any good?"

Shephard lifts an eyebrow at the change of subject, then shrugs inwardly. He's not dealing with Autor. The guy's probably just trying to be polite. "It ain't bad," he allows. "I ain't generally the science fiction type, but it ain't half bad. Old school shit from... fuck, I dunno, 1907 or somethin'. Some of it's remindin' me of some of the folks I met here'n the shit they tell me 'bout their world back home- you meet any of the trolls here yet? Grey fuckers with horns?"

He doesn't have to be the science fiction type. That's his actual life.

Clint settles back slightly, interested. "I've seen them."

Shephard nods. "Couple of 'em're friends of mine," he says. "Well, most of 'em, anyways. Ain't seen Terezi in a while, I dunno if she counts at this point, can't say I ever met the other one who comes around... anyways, one of 'em told me they got computer languages they c'n use to rewrite real-world shit, and some kind of a video game that sticks the players in their own weird-ass little pocket dimensions. I got no clue how that works. The eggheads back home had to work like fuck to git a door open to another dimension and they sure as shit didn't do it with a video game."

He indicates the book. "Point is, one of the trolls told me 'bout the dimension the game gave him. Land of Pulse'n Haze, he called it. The fella most of the weird shit in the book happens to winds up spending a big ol' chunk of time in some ungodly fuckin' weird dimension of huge flat silent plains and blood red haze and mountains out of nowhere that wind up bein' full of seriously fucked up gods'n monsters'n shit. Some of 'em sound mighty like the things the trolls call 'Horrorterrors', too. Kind of odd for a man writing in 1907."

... He's kind of glad Natasha doesn't have access to that program.

"You think he wasn't just making it up?"

"I dunno. Maybe. Weird shit happens," says Shephard. "Might be he got a little look-see at somethin' humans ain't usually supposed to see. Fuck, for all I know the man coulda come to Milliways himself and talked to the trolls. Ain't like bein' from 1907 would keep him from showin' up here three or four years from now, you know?"

"Jesus fuck, I hate tryin' to keep track of how time works around this place."

Clint laughs, not entirely amused. "No kidding." He's quiet for a moment, thinking.

"I ran into someone I know from home a few days ago. She's usually in here from my time, but she was maybe your age instead, so that'd make it -- awhile ago. Does that happen a lot?"

"That'n running into folks who've got the same face as you or someone else you know," Shephard says. "'Parently I look just like some actor or somethin'. You sure that was your friend'n not some other person with her face on a younger body?"

Clint nods. He's noticed the resemblance, though he wouldn't've said 'just like'.

"Pretty sure," he says. "They like the same stuff and are from the same country, with the same first name. I didn't want to ask too close, because -- " he hesitates. "It'd be... awkward, if she worked out I know her."

Edited 2013-09-06 05:15 (UTC)

Shephard nods. "Makes sense," he says. "Yeah, I hear that kind of shit happens a lot around here. Folks don't run into themselves but they sure as fuck run into folks they know from other parts of their lives." He thinks for a minute and adds, "'Course, it could be some kinda alternate universe version of her. That happens too. I've met two or three different versions of Captain America."

"Huh," Clint says, tucking away the folk don't run into themselves as anecdotal reassurance. "What's he like?"

Shephard scratches his nose, thinking. "Man's as solid as they come," he finally says, "both the versions I c'n recollect. He c'n put starch in your spine when you need it most, I know that much. And I'll tell you what, there ain't but two people in this world I won't cuss in front of. He's the one that ain't my momma."

Sometimes he slips up in front of kids or his girlfriend, but those two are pretty inalienable cases.

Clint breathes a bit of a laugh, nodding. More serious: "Do you have him in your world, too?"

If he does, Clint will be a little concerned. Steve Rogers and Margaret Carter are pretty intertwined in his head, and Margaret Carter and SHIELD are nearly as synonymous as SHIELD and Nick Fury. Cap's in X's world, too, but so is some other SHIELD. And X's world is basically his, if people were trying to make it exciting.

Shephard's world has aggressive inter-dimensional aliens. Who says they can't reschedule? Clint hates paperwork, but he'd hate getting his world destroyed (and then saved by Marines) more.

"Naw. No superheroes, no powers," says Shephard. "Less'n you count the lightning shit the Vortigaunts do, but they're aliens, so that don't count the same way. There's a version of him's been to my world, but that's on account of us meetin' him here'n him offerin' to help. That one don't come here any more, though."

Clint nods. "We had him," he says, after a moment. "He died fifty, sixty years ago. My world hasn't really had superheroes since."

No matter how much Stark would like to believe otherwise.

"Damn shame," says Shephard. "They're dead useful folk when things git extra ugly. Least the ones who come here seem to be."

What he'd like to say is, you sure he's dead. Given that both he and Freeman spent a good twenty years in suspended animation and everybody thought he, at least, was dead at the time, it's a valid question in his mind. Probably not the best thing to suggest, though. Weird time shit happens more often than not around here.

He nods towards the bowhunting magazine. "That from home?"

Clint glances down at it, and breathes a half-laugh. "Yeah," he says, pushing it across the table slightly. "I'm not a bigger hunter, but," he shrugs. "Do you ever use a bow?"

"I shoot primitive, mostly," says Shephard. "Made my own Osage orange selfbow a while back, got about sixty pounds of pull on it. Used to have a real fuckin' sweet Cuban lemonwood longbow back before I enlisted, but time ain't kind to old wood."

He offers an almost apologetic look as he notes, "Nothin' wrong with the fancy shit, y'understand. Just ain't as big a thing for me."

Clint's listening, interested, as Shephard explains -- then breathes a laugh at his comment. "Nah, it's fine. I was traditional to start with, but I'm a sucker for new tech. When'd you get started?"

Shephard thinks for a minute, then wiggles one hand in midair. "Seven or eight years old? Somethin' like that. One of my aunts found a real old Little Bear bow when she was helpin' clean out a neighbor's house'n gave it to me for Christmas. Didn't git to hunt with one 'til I was a couple years older, on account of Uncle Artie didn't want me shootin' at nothin' I didn't have a strong enough bow to bring down on the first hit. You?"

[ooc: sooo if I ever sound off-base, let me know? Wikipedia is only useful to an extent; I don't really know how people talk about archery when not arguing on the internet; all I know is that the recurve vs. compound debate is one Clint has completely steered clear of because he uses both in the movies]

[OOC: not a problem! I'll email you if need be.]

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