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.]

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Cisco grins, and then his eyes widen. "Oh, uh, just a like, scientific research team, kind of thing... "

He pauses, then shakes his head, leaning in and lowering his voice.

"Okay, we don't hunt vampires, but we definitely take on evil super-villains."

"Always cool," says Andrew approvingly.

"Wait, aren't all supervillains evil? ... Oh, I guess you could have a chaotic neutral supervillain."

"Point," Cisco concedes. "Just about every supervillain is evil, but not every evil is a supervillain. Haven't come across the chaotic neutral, yet, though. Probably give it a couple of weeks."

"That often?" His eyes widen a little. "Where do you guys work?"

"Thaaat, I can't say," he says, then adds, "Or I'd have to kill you."

Which is completely untrue, but c'mon, Cisco has practically lived his whole life for an opportunity to say that!

"Fair enough," says Andrew, agreeably. "I just meant, like, approximate city area, not street address? But if it's classified that's cool too."

"Oh, yeah, no, that I can give. I'm in Central City," he says cheerfully. "How about you?"

"Oh," he says, "New York."

And considers for a moment asking -- but no, he can't really bring up anyone by name, and by the time he thinks of I knew a guy from Central City once it's too late to make it sound natural.

"Oh? Have you heard of it?" he prompts, wondering if this is one of the people who's from a world similar to his and Barry's.

Although, he's undecided if he'd really like vampires to turn up in theirs. On the one hand it'd be pretty awesome, on the other hand it would suck, literally.

Well, if Cisco's going to give him the opening ...

"Sort of? I don't think there's a Central City in my world, but I knew a guy here once who was from there. Long while ago, I haven't seen him in years."

"Oh for real? So far as I know only me and my friend Barry come in from Central City, but we've heard there are people from worlds like ours and things are kind of wiggy with how that works." It's an interesting phenomenon that Cisco means to investigate further as he learns more about Milliways.

"Wait, Barry?"

Andrew's eyes widen, and he sits up.

"Yeah," Cisco nods, eyeing him. "Allen? Do you know him? Or... "

He tilts his head, eyes narrowing a bit. "He's not the guy you knew, is he?"

"Barry Allen," he repeats, blinking a bit. "Tall guy? Short blond hair? Wears a tie even when he's not at work?"

Cisco blinks back at him, shaking his head.

"Noo... tall, yeah, but he's got brown hair and I don't know if I've ever seen him in a tie. Sweaters, yeah, dude wears a lot of sweaters."

"Huh." His brow furrows. "That's ... weird. Maybe they're related? Unless --"

A beat.

"Okay, if this is a weird question I'll withdraw it, but ... does your Barry, by any chance ... run really fast?"

Cisco's expression blanks, and then he suddenly finds his empty mug super interesting.

"Huh, no, I-- I-- no, I don't, whaaat?" he stammers, looking down into the bottom of his mug, tilting the glass this way and that in distraction.

He pauses a moment and lifts his eyes, studying Andrew shrewdly.

"Why? Does yours?"

"I mean he's not mine, but the one I knew here? Yeah. Super fast."

Cisco gets a sidelong glance, and no commentary about his reaction.

"Well yeah, the one you knew," Cisco clarifies.

He chews on his lip for a moment, considering, then finally relents.

"He might be. He's told me he's heard about other Barry Allens out there who are fast, too." But didn't mention one coming here.

"Alternate timelines, maybe?" Andrew offers. "That happens here every so often."

"Yeah, there seems to be a big multiverse thing at play here. It's weird, but pretty awesome," Cisco says, ending on a grin.

"But hey, look, just FYI, my boy Barry is trying to keep a lid on the superspeed thing, so if we could keep that on the down low that'd be great... "

"Oh," he says, "for sure, not a problem," and mimes zipping his mouth shut.

And then mimes unzipping it to say "Yeah, the multiverse thing is huge here. Not just different timelines but whole different universes, with their own metaphysics and stuff."

Cisco snaps his fingers and mimes a pistol shoot thumbs-up at Andrew. He felt like he could count on the dude.

"Ooo, their own metaphysics? Do tell."

"Okay, so like --" He shifts on his barstool, turning to face Cisco more directly, gesturing with both hands. "There's some worlds where magic works, right? And some where magic from other worlds is gonna act unpredictably, and some where it doesn't work at all. There's at least one world out there where you can travel faster than light by using warp engines, and another where you can only manage interstellar distances through wormholes, and one where you can make your own wormholes but they collapse as soon as you shut down the generator thing. There's like no consistency at all across the universes and it's amazing."

He's grinning, maybe just a little wildly.

Cisco shifts on his stool as well, facing Andrew and raptly listening to him.

"Okay, so I've talked to somebody who's galaxy, far, far, away has the hyperspace thing, and I've been getting butterbeers from Bar that note the possibility for a world with magic, but you said warp engines; does that mean there are people here boldly going out there in space?"

Cisco holds his hands together up under his chin, waiting with bated breath to see if any of those references register with Andrew and for an answer on the warp engines.