hfm_logs | [Open] One major problem with outer space is that you can't skate in it...

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[Open] One major problem with outer space is that you can't skate in it...

Warnings: Swearing, flagrant disregard for safety
Location: From the Spire to the Bro Apartment
Characters: Casey, whoever he collides with
When: September 12th, slightly backdated to the morning of.
Summary: Casey wakes up on the spire after two eventful years at home. He gets antsy and overstimulated. And speedy.

The closest thing Casey had to compare it to was waking up after spacing out at school. Last time he'd been really awake, he and his friends had been staring down the barrel of the entire Triceraton battle fleet in a tiny little spaceship. It had been time to take action, get into battle positions, and...

Well, run away. But in a cool, heroic way of course.

But now he was standing back on the spire in Freesia. He'd thought about it off and on over the course of the two years, during the time when things weren't crazy enough on their own. He'd never mentioned it to his friends, he hadn't even been totally sure it was real. Well, now he WAS sure, and...

And now what? He was...trapped again? The freedom of space, the adventure, the new horizons, the endless new ways to be a badass...well, so much for that? Or maybe he'd been brought back because his job here hadn't been finished. But then why send him back at all...?

He was angry, but it was the mindless, useless anger that took over when he didn't want to be scared or sad, the kind that drove him until he could think of a reason to stop being angry. It didn't seem to make any sense, but adrenaline could keep him from thinking about it until he got back home. Well, to his home here and the apartment probably wouldn't get sucked into a black hole, which was a plus.

And at least this gave him a chance to do something he's always wanted to try: Grinding the railing of the Spire's stairs all the way down. That turned out to be way harder than he thought. The effort to stay upright and the constant spinning meant he lost his balance once or twice (though he managed to teeter towards the few-foot drop of the stairs and not the much longer drop in the other direction) and when he finally hits the bottom he's almost too dizzy to skate straight.

He doesn't want to stop or slow down though, not until he knows his friends are OK. It doesn't even occur to him that he hasn't been gone all THAT long in Freesia time, not with the weird lump in his gut crowding out every other thought. He's only really left himself less likely to be able to brake in time, but when has that ever stopped him...

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For a moment, Wash wondered if his brain had gotten jostled on impact harder than he'd thought. But he knew what a concussion felt like, and this wasn't it. Usually it was headaches, brain fog, and exhaustion, not his conversational partner making no sense. Casey had only been gone for a day at most-

But Casey wasn't a hugger unless he was upset or desperate, and he was saying he'd hadn't seen Wash for much longer than a day-

Wash hugged him back, firm but gentle - he had no idea if Casey was injured, and he didn't want to exacerbate it if he was. "You went home, didn't you."

"For two freakin' years!" Casey exclaimed, giving Wash a last hard squeeze before he let go and sat back. "Well...kinda. Maybe a year an' a half? I dunno how to figure dates with the whole time travel thing..."

"Time travel-" Wash paused for a moment, closing his eyes. Nope. He'd parse that out later; for now, he needed to get Casey back to the apartment. Bones and Greg would be relieved he'd turned up. He pushed himself to his feet and offered Casey a hand up. "We'll figure it out later. For now, let's get you back to the apartment. For what it's worth, you've only been missing here for a day or so."

And Casey takes Wash's hand to get to his feet. "Just a day?! That's it?! Man-!" After everything that's happened...it just seems wrong somehow. Like it doesn't even matter, he just came back here to go back to the same old monster-fighting city stuff?

Yet another thing he doesn't know how to react to in a day(?) full of them, and he walked a little faster than he might have otherwise back to the apartment. He'd tell Wash everything but...it's such a long story that he should probably wait until more than once person's around to hear it. Of course, it's only when he gets to the apartment that he realizes:

"Oh, uh, guess I don't got my key since I went home."

"Tell me about it." You fight a whole war and nope, turns out you've only been gone for thirty-six hours, have fun with that! It's a pretty rough thing to get your head around, and Wash walks with Casey in relative silence. If Casey needs time to process, Wash will give it to him.

"We'll get you another one." Wash unlocks the door and pushes it open, letting Casey enter before him. "Hey, Bones, look who I found."

"If it's your friend with the bum eye I can't help him- and tell him to quit steal'n pies!" He says, elbow deep in fixing a batch of muffins. Okay. He may be stress baking. Grief baking. Whatever. It beats drinking his frustrations away, it's a more productive thing to do with his time. Course he's hollering from the kitchen and pokes his head out to see-

"...Goddamn. Casey?" The kid looked different. Taller? Older? Shit, how long was he gone?

"Uh...hey, Bones!" Man, does he look that wiped? "Long time no see...Well, I mean, guess ya just saw me a day ago, but I've been kicking around back home for like...two years! Give or take six months."

Yeah, it gets weirder every time he says it. Maybe Bones knows about this stuff, being from the future and all. "Time travel kinda messes up your sense of time, ya know?"

"It's funny that you think York listens to me," Wash mutters. Talking to York about stolen pie, especially in light of the fact that refrigerators refilled themselves here, had been entirely fruitless - not that Wash had expected anything else.

"I think you're the only one here who's done that, Casey," he adds. "Though if it's been two years for you, you can probably just call it two years."

"I wasn't the one do'n the time travl'n, kid." Bones wipes off his hands and walks around the counter, coming in to rest his hands on Casey's shoulders. "You went off and got a li'l broader, didn't ya?"

Bigger. Older. Two years- he can't really call him a kid anymore now, can he? Nope. "This is what happens, Wash. We miss one day and he's all grown up."

"Heh...guess so?" It's been two years, but he really doesn't feel much different than he ever did. "But it's still same ol' Casey Jones."

He grins at Bones when he comes around. "Course...a lotta stuff's happened since I've been gone. Not even sure where to start."

Wash just looks at Bones. "Wait, when did we become his parents?"

But on the question of where to start- "Knowing you? With a medical examination." He wasn't worried at all while Casey was gone. Nope.

"When we weren't look'n." He snorts a soft laugh and hauls Casey in for a proper hug, squeezing him tight. The kid was a pain in the neck most days but he meant well. He did well. It might not have been all that long but- he'd missed the kid. Worried about him. "Good t'have you back, kid."

Maybe it should've been weird that Wash and Bones were talking like they were his dads or something...but getting this kind of reception made it all worth it. It may have been only a day from their perspective but two years is a long time to miss people.

So he hugs Bones back good and tight, playfully rolling his eyes at Wash. "Ha ha...very funny." When Bones lets go, he steps back and puts his hands up. "Don't worry about the whole examination thing. I think the Fugitoid's spaceship woulda picked up on it if there was anythin' wrong."

Edited (Clarity ) 2015-11-24 16:42 (UTC)

"Uh-huh." That has some implications he's not sure he wants to consider, even if he has been acting like an overprotective dad towards Casey. And he worried about Casey while he was gone. And- nah, he's not going to consider it as a possibility right now. The fact that Casey was just gone for two years takes precedence.

Speaking of which: "The Fugitiods," Wash repeats slowly. "I don't think you've mentioned them before." And because it's worth asking outright: "What happened, anyway?" Between new aliens and time travel, there's a story to be told there.

"Never heard of 'em. If you think you're gett'n away without a full scan you got another think com'n, kid. Sit. Wash, give him a slice of pie, I'm gett'n my tricorder." Hell he's even got the old scan to compare the new one to- two years is a hell of a long time for someone at Casey's age group.

Of course he's getting a dumb scan, but the combination of time, distance and fresh pie makes it not worth much more than mild exasperation. "If it makes ya happy..."

He pulls out a chair from the dining table only to find Delilah curled up on it, giving her a few behind-the-ear scratches before moving her to the floor and sitting in the chair backwards. It's at least nice to have an animal around that you can pet without getting frostbite.

"So," he says, loud enough so that Bones can hear him from...wherever he keeps his tricorder, "these rumors start up of a dinosaur livin' in the sewers, right? So the Mutanimals go check it out. Raph's old mutated turtle, Slash and the monkey-scientist Rockwell go out lookin' for it. Turns out it's totally real, right? Some kind of two-legged Triceratops from an alien race! Anyway the guy hits like a runaway train, knocks out Slash, and gets away."

Casey becomes more and more animated as he talks, gesticulating, talking faster and faster as he works himself up. "My bro Raph tracks him down and he's so loopy from Earth's air he thinks Raph's his commander. So he gets him to lead him and his brothers down to the Statue of Liberty where get this: The Kraang are back, gearing up for Earth invasion round 3! Not only that, but these Triceratons are the Kraang's ancient intergalactic rivals and they wanna take out the Earth to get rid of the Kraang once and for all!"

Delilah is having absolutely none of this. She'd just gotten a nice warm spot going! She plunks her butt down by the chair and meows, loud and squeaky. If she can't have her warm spot, she's at least going to be petted by the thief, whether he likes it or not.

Wash spares Delilah a glance - honestly, why does every cat in his life have an attitude? - before heading into the kitchen proper to cut a few slices of pie. One for Casey, sure, but he wants one and he figures Bones can join them once the requisite medical checkup is over and done with. He works quietly, listening to Casey, and tries not to freeze up at take out the Earth. Casey's alien triceratops were not the same as the Covenant dinos, and he was pretty damn certain nobody but the Covenant went around glassing planets, and the Covenant did not exist in Casey's dimension. Not his dimension; not his trauma.

That said, he'd love to go a week without hearing about someone's planet being blown up. That would be great.

He puts a piece of pie down on the table next to Casey and slides into another seat. "That sounds pretty shortsighted."

"Yeah, cuz blow'n up a whole damn planet really is the best solution." He doesn't shout. He doesn't bitch or rant cuz it ain't his world. It ain't his problem. It's Casey's and if he knows anything about the kid? He won't let that happen. Still the image of Vulcan getting sucked into nothing plays over and over in the back of his mind as he pulls out the scanning wand of his Tricorder and gives Casey a once over, comparing it to the scans from before and after gett'n knocked around.

Looks like everything's in order. Taller, little broader, more muscle on him. Probably as tall as he's gonna get but- hey. Teenagers can surprise him. Nothing too terrible strange pops up on the scans.

He can live with that.

"All clear, kid. Eat your pie."

Casey regards the kitten for a moment with amusement before leaning down to scoop her up. She's small enough to fit comfortably in one hand, so that's where she's going to sit while he scratches her. Since she asked so directly...and annoyingly.

"Yeah, well, they told us that humans were the dumb ones, like one of those numbers where they hijack all our TV signals to tell us they were gonna wipe us out. So they set up this black hole generator in the middle of the city, and we know it's about to go down for real."

He doesn't stop talking through the scan, and once it's over, he flips around in the chair, prompting an annoyed rrr from Delilah.

"So we get all our friends to come help in the fight, and we stop the Triceratons from settin' it off but we also can't kick their butts off our planet and they go to charge generator up again...so my friend April gets the bright idea to go talk to friggin' Shredder and get his help-OW!"

He didn't know he was squeezing Delilah as hard as he was until she expresses her displeasure in the direct language of kittens: by biting his hand. Between this and Ice Cream Kitty sharking people in card games? All cats are jerks. Casey lets her jump back to the floor, which is all the better to focus on the pie. Bones still makes the best pie and it helps soothe the anger he had worked himself up to a moment before.

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[Open] One major problem with outer space is that you can't skate in it...

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