milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"You have GOT to be kidding me."

Standing in the open doorway, Cisco stares at the bar shaking his head.

With a sigh he tosses his toolbelt onto a bench beside the doorway and steps through into Milliways, letting the door close behind him.

His annoyance at what he had to go through to get here evaporates quickly, and when he takes a seat at the counter he’s all smiles.

"Hi, Bar. Remember me?"

That is absolutely not a squeal of delight when Bar produces a napkin with a cheerful greeting and a mug of Butterbeer to go along with it, anyone who hears one is clearly just imagining things.

Taking a drink, he turns on his stool to observe the bar at large, wondering just what exactly he can get into this time.

[ooc: link leads to a short oom.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I guess," Baze says, rolling his massive shoulders in a shrug. He takes a pull on the cream slush straw.

"I'm glad you're still friends, and I'm glad you were able to come here. If you were mad mad, what could you even do? Not talking to him would be awkward."

"That would be seriously awkward, and pretty awful," he admits. He really likes having Barry as a friend.

"And you're right, I am here, and it's awesome, so yeah, no I'm not mad." Final answer, really.

"Have you known Barry awhile?"

"A little while," Baze says, nodding exactly once.

"I can't tell you how long, because it's hard to keep track of time here. But a few months at least. What about you?"

"Oh yeah?" He considers that, then nods. "Yeah, I guess it would be hard to keep track. What with it freezing on the outside, and people coming in from different times and all. Trippy."

He ponders the possibilities a moment, then gets to Baze's question, "Almost a year. Although, he was unconscious for a majority of that, so I guess I've really only 'known' him for a few months, too."

"Oh, right, the coma," Baze says, drinking more of the unfortunately-named Suicide slush.

"He mentioned that the people at S.T.A.R. labs were instrumental in helping him through that. Do you work there?"

Cisco smiles when he hears that Barry gave the S.T.A.R. Labs team props.

"Yeah. I mean, I didn't personally do a whole lot to help Barry, that was mainly Caitlin and Dr. Wells, but I assisted where I could. In fact, you could say I brought him out of it. Well, me and Lady Gaga."

Because it was totally Cisco's song choice that brought Barry out of coma-land. Right.

"Oh, Lady Gaga?" Baze says, slurping on the cream slush.

"Barry mentioned Caitlin and Dr. Wells and you, but not Lady Gaga. Is she another member of the team?"

"Oh, I wish," Cisco replies. "No, she's a singer. One of Barry's favorites. I put on one of her songs the day Barry woke up. Sometimes things like that can be a trigger, and maybe it was coincidence, or maybe I just lucked out, but hey, he's here and awake now so it's a win either way."

"Ohh," Baze says, nodding again.

"Well, that was fortunate, indeed. I still can't believe he was in a coma for nine months. That has to mess with him. I'm glad the people at your lab helped him out. What are you working on now?"

"It's pretty crazy, right?" Cisco says, nodding and thinking about how Baze doesn't even know the full of it, because it gets even crazier.

"We're in a bit of a lull right now. Like, today I did boring maintenance stuff around the building. It did give me ideas for upgrading a Roomba, which is basically a vacuum cleaner robot, so maybe I'll work on that until something bigger comes up."

"I've heard of Roombas," Baze says, wrinkling his nose.

"The person who suggested getting one also suggested painting funny faces on it, or getting googly eyes. He also made sure that we wouldn't get one if we had a pet that poops on the floor, which is totally gross. What do you usually work on?"

"Poop, gross. Personally I think putting a face on a machine is the quickest way to Skynet," Cisco says, mirroring Baze's expression and shaking his head. "I do like the DJ-Roomba idea, though. I've seen someone put a music player on one and let it roam around playing jams while cleaning house."

On the question his expression brightens.

"Lot's of stuff. Projects for Caitlin and Dr. Wells, and a couple things for Barry. I'm a mechanical engineer, so basically they think it up, and I build it. For Caitlin it's usually biomedical equipment, like, I made-up or tweaked a few machines for her when she was working on Barry. Dr. Wells, I helped him build the Particle Accelerator. And then I've got my own projects, drones right now, and I'm modifying a suit I created for heat-resistance and protection."

"That's a lot of projects!" Baze says, with another drink of butterbeer.

"Good for you. I'm glad you have so much much to occupy that brain of yours. What's Skynet?"

"Oh yeah, it's definitely best I don't get bored," Cisco says with a laugh.

His expression turns into a 'whoops', and he gives a quick glance around before explaining, "Skynet is an advanced artificial intelligence that takes over the world with an uprising of machines. It's uh, from a movie."

Which hopefully isn't represented here in Milliways, since he's not supposed to blab about real worlds that are fictional where he and Barry are from.

"Oh, that's awful," Baze says, slurping his cream slush.

"I can't even imagine machines rising up. Someone here has a problem with killer robots, so he might not be surprised to hear that story."

"It's a really cool movie series, though," Cisco adds, in case that makes Baze feel any better.

"Who uh, who would that be?" he asks, fingers crossed that the name isn't 'John Connor'.

"A soldier named Gabriel Reyes," Baze says, picking up the Suicide cup and taking a gulp of slush.

"Droids in our galaxy are creepy as is, much less trying to kill people. I know during the war with the Separatists, droids were used in battle before clonetroopers."

Like Chirrut, Baze refuses to call those wars by their popular name: the Clone Wars.

Cisco thinks about the name for a minute, then shakes his head, unable to place it.

"Aww, you don't like droids? I think robots are kinda cool, as long as they aren't the killer take over humanity kind. Like Wall-E, you have to love Wall-E."

"Oh, I know Wall-E!" Baze says, grinning around his straw.

"The first half of that movie was great, but the second half suffered from pacing issues and a convoluted plot shoved into the latter part of the film."

Baze Malbus, film critic.

Cisco beams when Baze says he knows Wall-E, it's always a great thing when people get Cisco's pop culture references.

The smile falters, though, on Baze's assessment of the movie.

"Bro, what are you even talking about?! Okay, granted, they got a little cutesy with the message, but the ending of that movie was beautiful. Two artificial beings finding love as humanity rediscovers its own connection with each other and the world they left behind? It's beyond poetic."

Hello, Baze Malbus, film critic, meet Cisco Ramon, film buff and romantic.

Oh, no, a romantic? Baze has no idea how to deal with one of those.

"The film had several messages, and with the exception of 'don't trash your only home,' they were all clumsily delivered. They spent a heck of a lot of time establishing that the planet was destroyed, and not very much explaining how the humans would resettle a barren wasteland. I mean, I'm sure they were able to, but I bet a lot of them died off in the first year, which doesn't fit the tone of the movie as a whole."

"They had a gigantic spaceship that sustained them for literally centuries" Cisco counters, waving an arm as if the ship was behind him. "They could very easily have lived there while cultivating the earth around them before eventually branching out."

Slurping his slush in preparation to fight Baze on this, Cisco continues. "Besides that, they had all the robots to help with, and with the co-pilot out of the picture they could unseal all those hidden records and find the information they would need to learn how to adapt and survive. The plants in the ending shot showed the earth was already primed for regrowth, the people and robots would just need to help it along."

"But why did the film need the copilot going chaotic evil in the first place? The focus shifted between droid vs. nature and loneliness to man vs. computer, and eventually man vs. nature," Baze says, drinking a bit of the butterbeer.

"Wall-E wasn't invested in the copilot conflict, that was all the pilot's doing. In the first half of the film, Wall-E was the clear protagonist. In the second, he was a catalyst, sure, but he lacked agency and focus."

Cisco runs his hands through his hair, not quite believing what he's hearing.

"No, he is absolutely still the protagonist in the end! He totally completes the Campbell's hero arc through the second and third acts."

Hunching up on his stool so that his feet rest on a higher rung, Cisco counts off on his fingers.

"He went through the tests, allies and enemies when he freed the other robots and took on the security drones, the trash compactor scene was him approaching the innermost cave, he 'died', sacrificing himself to save the plant was his moment of choice and crisis, he went back to Earth, was reborn, and in the end 'returned with the elixir' by bringing the people back to Earth so that they could recolonize based on the knowledge that he helped them to gain. Boom, full hero arc. And that's a mic drop."

The declaration is made by the miming action of said mic dropping.

Baze has never heard of Campbell's hero's arc, but clearly Cisco knows what he's talking about. The Guardian laughs, picking up his butterbeer for another drink.

"All right, all right. Clearly I need to watch this movie again, and pay closer attention. I concede the point."