capeandcowllogs | This is your brain.

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This is your brain.

WHO: Terry and Raven again, with the potential of anyone else who might be hanging out at Raven's place?
WHERE: Lake Placid house
WHEN: IN BETWEEN DRAGONS. Aka backdated to shortly after Terry goes dragonriding and shortly before the vampire nazis
WARNINGS: ... drug references? idk.
SUMMARY: After witnessing a flying zebra shooting lasers and a suit of armor zooming around with a phoenix and a giant bat and a girl with wings and not one but two dragons and Fun With Gravity and suddenly green elf girls, Terry's pretty convinced that someone's been slipping him Illegal Substances.
FORMAT: Para I guess

Terry liked Raven well enough at this point. He still didn't really trust her - that would take longer than the few days he'd been living with her - but he'd stopped turning his room into a deathtrap before he ever went to sleep, which was certainly an improvement over how things had been four days ago. The house had passed the scan he'd quietly run over it, which was a bonus, and everyone seemed friendly - Raven seemed so happy to have him here too, which made it much harder to be wary. Terry liked people happy, and even if it was sometimes kind of odd, the little looks she'd give him - expecting something, or suddenly turning in remembrance before remembering that he didn't remember....

He kind of hated it when that happened, just because she looked so broken up over it (in a really subtle, no-I-won't-share-my-feelings-no-I'm-not-sad-why-are-you-asking sort of way) and he was never entirely sure what to do.

Still, the fact of the matter was that he'd stopped moving with the dangerous, silky sort of grace he got when he was either particularly angry or on edge, which was good, and he had left off almost slicing the family pets in half when they appeared suddenly, which was also good. They'd all be dead if he hadn't. After all, Peter had shown a love of occasionally climbing legs, Cassio always wanted the attention, Lady also always wanted the attention and never let off begging to play or for belly rubs whenever she thought she could get away with it. And Emilia, the only one who Terry wouldn't really have minded so much as the others if she was accidentally made into smaller cat-components rather than one whole, functioning, prone-to-random-acts-of-violence cat, was still part of the 'animals Raven likes' category. Somehow. Which surely counted for something, this was her house....

He was settling in. Warily. Which was why he felt rather annoyed, when it began to look like someone was slipping him acid in his pancakes. The whole situation just couldn't end happily.

He leaned against the wall with his arms folded and waited for Raven to exit the room she was currently in. He glared as he waited. Really? He stayed with her of his own free will and this was what happened?

"So."

His voice was angry - a low sort of anger, one that wouldn't really make him blow up, but one that could move on to blowing up pretty quickly.

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You know, it's tones like those that make her want to turn around and walk right back into the room, then teleport twenty miles away and not return for a week. Still, it was Terrence, and she couldn't really just... ignore him.

All right she could, but that would be rude, and she was still walking on eggshells around him. That was the way it always was with the 'strays' she managed to take in, after they were happy and content they had a hard time ever leaving of their own accord, but those first few weeks of trust-building were shaky.

She paused, only a foot or so from him, looking up at him curiously. She did he best to not look like a deer caught in the headlights, just from the odd emotions coming off of him.

"... so...?"

"Yeah. So."

How wonderfully unhelpful.

"Am I allowed to know what, exactly, you've been doing to me?"

He was radiating hostility, but for no obvious reason. Or, well, the reason was obvious to him, but would be a complete mystery to her.

There was a long pause, one of those uncomfortable drawn-out pauses like you see in television, where the two people simply stare at one another until something witty is said.

Except she didn't make a witty remark, only lifted up one thin eyebrow at him, then began walking back down the hall, toward the kitchen.

"What on Earth are you talking about, Terrence?"

"I'm talking," he said, voice getting dangerously controlled, "about the fact that I'm pretty sure I was high on something a few hours ago, and last I checked, I didn't do anything to get that way.

"There was a zebra. With wings. That shot lasers from it's mouth. Chasing a dragon, that became two distinct dragons, one of which I almost crashed into a building.

"So if you don't mind, I'd like to know what's going on."

Edited 2010-04-23 06:27 (UTC)

She didn't even stop walking, really - or even turn around to double check that she had heard what she thought she had heard. This place adjusted you to some pretty weird things...

"This reality can throw much stranger things than zebras and dragons, Terrence." she only actually stopped to look at him when she got to the kitchen counter - it was her turn to cook, and she figured she could multitask that with this conversation.

"Last Christmas we were attacked by a very large man-eating fruit cake. We've fought zombies multiple times. James Bond is a real, living person here. You get used to it."

This was when Terry lost his composure, but also lost that sharp edge of hostility. He lost just about everything. He felt that he was about an inch away from wildly waving his arms, and he felt that he'd be completely justified in doing so.

"Yes! Weird stuff happens here! I've noticed that already and I only just got here. Weird stuff happens at home too - kids getting their brains fried and getting psychic powers and radioactive heads of multi-billion dollar companies who sometimes try to kill me and guys who have technically been dead for about 10 years trying to kidnap their daughters by pulling the entire HOUSE underground and mutant killer rats and who KNOWS what. But zebras! With wings! Chasing dragons and shooting lasers at them! Then, after I woke up - because I got knocked out somehow - there's an elf. Who never opens her eyes."

Edited 2010-04-23 06:43 (UTC)

"Hey..." it wasn't shot off, but was rather spoken very quietly, with a soft look taking over her eyes. He really was worked up and upset about this, it wasn't just some 'I need to vent' conversation. She didn't get close to him though, even though she really wanted to.

"... I'm sure there's a good explanation for all of this. Was that all you saw?" she was completely serious.

In a way, it was a need to vent conversation. But this even had become a catalyst for everything, he kind of needed to explode and then quiet down again. If that was the best way to put it.

He sighed and slid into a chair, then folded his arms on the bar in front of him and put his head on his arms.

"No."

His voice was slightly muffled.

"They spike the water here, don't they?"

"I wish, it would probably make things a lot less of a headache. We'd always be able to blame the absolute insanity on what we drink." it was a lame attempt at humor, as she gave him a wry, yet gentle smile.

She turned to open the refrigerator, pulling out some vegetables that needed to be cut up for the meal, and set it down on the bar countertop so she could face him while she worked.

"The only zebra like that... at least that I know of around here, is in the card game that one of my students play. They had a tournament not too long ago, it was quite intense. Perhaps someone with mind control abilities, or something in reality bending got their hands on the design?" she was just blindly throwing out suggestions by what she knew at this point. She had shuffled through a few decks of the cards once she was able to get her hands on some, just to see what the fuss was about.
She remembered that card, and also a few that had elves like he had explained - sure as hell were enough dragons. But then again, this could be anything. Who knew what the worlds of others had in store for them? Polymorphs from Rimmer and Lister's world had shown up the previous summer, for Azar's sake...

"This is why I have the house so far out of the city, really. We tend to not be bothered by things like that, unless it's a direct influence from the Porter itself. Things caused by other people's powers, or based in the city? They don't harm us here."

"There was... it looked like a synthoid or something, I don't know, zipping around with a burning bird on a leash and zebras shooting lasers and dragons and bats that were about 80 times bigger than they should be. And mist that didn't exist, or shouldn't exist.

"But the real trick of it was this - I felt things. That dragon felt pretty solid, if it wasn't, and the wind felt real.

"It was solid enough to cause my batarang to explode, anyway. And everything felt fuzzy and looked fuzzy and things just didn't act the way they were supposed to. And then I passed out. When I woke up, none of this. But there was an elf asking me questions."

"Well, they did use holographic simulators at the tournament, and... you know that Arnold is a hologram, and is more than able to touch things like anyone else. It's possible that they've learned the technology as well."

She gave him an even weaker smile now, briefly abandoning her duties to pay complete attention to him for the moment.

"... anything is possible here..."

Terry groaned.

"Someone needs to fix that. Life gets too interesting when anything is possible."

She couldn't help a gentle laugh, and leaned forward, her arms on the top of the counter, and the top half of her body pressed down onto them. This brought her pretty damn close to him, but close enough to get her point across, and to look right in his eyes.

"One day someone will, I'm sure of it. Until then, we all have each other."

"Great," he said dryly. "Who would ever want to go home?"

Then he sighed and straightened, and his expression changed. It was hard again, serious, scrutinizing - his Batman face. "You're sure that I haven't been getting slipped acid or anything like acid?" His expression was calculating, and he looked at her as though he'd be able to see it if she lied. "Some of the things that happened..." he hesitated for a long moment before finishing the sentence. "They... they seemed like hallucinations. Not holograms."

No explanation of that. After all, there were holograms in his time. But she might catch something in his emotions, if she found her way beyond the Batman mask - not as difficult as it might be otherwise. There was a flicker of memory - what things had felt like when he was 14.

And it wasn't like he had to rely on her words, not entirely. He could check to see if she was lying when he got back to his room. Or, at least, if there was a possibility of her lying, because even if he had been drugged, it didn't necessarily have to have been her.

Edited 2010-04-24 05:36 (UTC)

"If you had been slipped hallucinogenics, I would have felt the alteration of your thoughts and emotions." she said rather matter-of-factly as she stood up straight again, and headed to the sink to wash the vegetables properly.

She just barely looked over her shoulder, "I briefly dated a man who enjoyed drugs and alcohol, I'm very aware of how things shift when one is under the influence. I'm sure you weren't drugged."

"... so we're down to me going nuts, if the other explanations fall through. That's encouraging." But he smiled a little, maybe ironically, mostly to himself.

He tilted his head a little and smiled again at her words. "So I take it you like troublemakers." She seemed to surround herself with them.

"That one was a mistake," she pointed at him briefly, moving back over to the bar to begin slicing the vegetables one by one. "I thought I could change him, before realizing that to change someone, they have to be open to it. I got nowhere fast."

Then she smiled, midway through cutting up a carrot.

"... otherwise yes, I do. You all bring excitement to my life, what can I say?"

Terry huffed a little sigh - yeah, he'd had friends like that. Back in the old days, when he'd just gotten out - they thought he'd be right back to who he was, he thought maybe he could set them right. Of course, Dana had been there by then. If not for her....

He grinned as he slid off the chair, slipped around the counter next to her. He dodged the knife and grabbed a slice of the carrot she was working on, then smiled at her.

"It works on some of us though," he told her. "The guys who don't mind changing." Then he grinned and slipped past her again, out of the room, because it wouldn't be smart just to take her word for everything when he had something he could use to verify her findings. And if he wanted to be able to he'd better work fast, some drugs became pretty untraceable pretty quickly.

He locked the door once he got back to the room, which he needed to work on redecorating if he was going to stay here, which he also needed to decide- In the mean time he nicked himself, carefully avoided getting blood on the carpet, and used his suit to scan for drugs. And came up clean. And wasn't sure what he felt about that, except confused. So he slipped out the window, because he could, and ran around the lake shore.

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This is your brain.

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