milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

It's late afternoon when someone who really looks like he doesn't belong here saunters in from the front door. (It's probably the uniform.) There's surprise on his face at first - who isn't surprised when a bar you've never been to before shows up where your closet should be? - but the expression is soon replaced with a big smile.

There's a blue flash and he's at the bar ordering a cup of coffee, black, and then another flash and he's seated in one of the comfy armchairs by the window. Legs crossed ankle over knee, he sits back and watches the display with an odd curiosity.

This has to be it. The place the workers at the Commission only whisper about.

Number Five has finally arrived at Milliways.

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"Where are you from?" He takes a nearby seat and makes himself comfortable. "And if it's Earth, what timeline? Is there an impending apocalypse?"

Wilford stops mindlessly tapping on his phone to actually look at the boy properly.

"You're a little young for Honours classes, aren't you?" he asks. Now with more than a few words spoken, his heavy Mid-Atlantic accent shines through.

He does not answer the question. Not directly, anyway.

"No, I'm not." It's said seriously, without missing a beat, but not in annoyance. Not yet.

"I'd prefer if you answered my questions."

Wilford nods. All right, definitely got some attitude on this one.

"Define apocalypse," he says. "We talking viral pandemic, aliens from outer space, some dumb kid reading Latin out loud?"

God, he's so bored with the world ending.

Five isn't a fan of the end of the world, either. Wait until he gets to do it again.

"Any kind you're aware of."

Wilford waves his hand vaguely. "I got out of that crap, and I'm keeping my feet firmly in the present," he says. "I don't care what's supposed to happen next week or next month or whatever. It'll happen when it happens."

It's someone else's problem now.

"So you don't know." The references to time get his attention. No one talks like that without having jumped.

"Do you belong in the present?"

"Yeah, sure. Why not," Wilford says dismissively.

Technically? Maybe?

That was an awfully big reset though. He's actually never thought about it much, and assumed things were 'right' once he caught up to where he'd left off.

"Why not?" Five practically shouts this at Wilford. "Because you can really fuck things up if you're in a time you don't belong in."

Totally a time jumper. And a pain in the ass jumper at that.

"That's when they start coming after you."

This earns the boy a very critical stare.

"Are you a cop?" Wilford asks plainly.

He sounds like a cop. Wilford's been younger than he's supposed to be before, so he wouldn't be surprised if a cop were undercover as a schoolboy.

Five just wants to laugh maniacally. "No, I'm not a cop, but I'm not about to let an apocalypse just happen." He slams his coffee cup on the nearest table.

"How do you do it? Travel through time?"

That's exactly what a cop would say. It's also what someone who wasn't a cop would say.

Wilford takes a deep breath, like he's been asked one of those Tough Questions.

"That's something your parents will have to explain," he says.

He's not even sure if the kid is old enough to reset. He should still be in that "young enough to bounce" age, from the looks of him.

"Dad's dead, mom's a robot." Entirely serious, aside from the growing frustration.

"I know how I time travel. How about you tell me how you do it."

Well that sure sounds interesting.

Not the dead dad and robot mom thing. Wilford spent a year chasing a story like that and it was boring as hell and only got him killed.

"Time travel," he says, very carefully. "You time travel. Not reset."

There's a very small, but important difference here.

Now Five is the interesting one.

"Of course I time travel. Spatial jumping, too." Not that he'll mention that his time travelling isn't quite stable. He blinks over to be right where Wilford is sitting.

"Reset. What's that?"

The jump startles Wilford a bit, but now he is intensely interested. His entire expression and demeanor changes to something almost predatory.

Wilford studies Five, and the uniform he's wearing. He doesn't recognise any of the insignia on it, but that's hardly surprising, especially around here.

"And you think I'm dangerous," he says finally. "It's one thing to fuck around with what's already happened." He wags a finger at the boy. "But you've gone forward, haven't you? What apocalypse have you caused?"

Meet Milliways' resident paranormal investigator, Five.

"I didn't cause a damn thing. I ended up in a post-apocalyptic wasteland."
He slinks into a closer chair, coffee forgotten. "Now I'm trying to stop it from happening."

"You said yourself, even being there will fuck something up. Butterfly effect, and all that."

Even if Wilford could go forward, he'd never want to. Entirely too much burden.

"What's this apocalypse of yours look like, then?"

Since it's clearly not aliens, viruses, or demons.

Five shakes his head. "It felt like I was supposed to be there." Even if he was half scared out of his mind the whole time.

"But I'm stopping this apocalypse. I'd rather see how things turn out if there isn't an end of the world."

This is fascinating. Usually the apocalypse is like, an unpleasant couple of weeks, and then everyone gets over it. It's never really worth stopping unless you already know how.

"And just how do you propose to do something like that?" he asks.

He's still not convinced that the kid isn't the one who causes it.

"I have an eye." Five pulls it out of his pocket and shows it to Wilford at a distance. It's a prosthetic eye.

"I found it in my brother's hands when I arrived. I think it belongs to the person who's responsible for it all."

"Stop!" Wilford says, snapping his fingers loudly. "What's that?"

Not the eye. He's pointing at Five's wrist.

Five looks at him for a minute. Is this guy an idiot, too?

"It's a tattoo."

The eye can wait for now. He'll get back to why that's weird in a moment.

"Why that tattoo?" he asks.

Never mind that it's on a child. He's well familiar with cults and trafficking and all the nefarious reasons a kid would be branded like that.

"It's an umbrella." It kind of matches the umbrella on his jacket badge. "Dad made us all get one."