The Strongman and the Witch
Characters: Willow Rosenberg (Red), Lou Martin (Normal)
Rating: PG13, probably.
Time period: Modern, Golden Age
Location: A short distance outside of the castle, the Time Room, The Hotel Fortunada
Relative Date: At about the same time as this post
Status: Closed
The sound from the helicopter didn't lend itself well to conversation and it also didn't help that the guy flying it wasn't exactly Mr. Personable. But they were lowering down to the ground and Willow could see a large castle in the distance. She couldn't help but wonder exactly what kind of trouble Oz had gotten into.
Lou heard the sound of the helicopter somewhere off in the distance, and his head immediately snapped upwards, scanning the sky. He'd been ready and waiting for this for weeks. Well, mostly ready. He'd been on the toilet once and eating another time, so he'd missed those chances. But not this time. This time he'd get his white whale. He checked the strap around his chest he'd used to secure the device he'd built for just such an occasion and set off at a run for the area, a good half-mile away, that the helicopter seemed to be descending towards.
There was a little bit of swaying as the helicopter came closer to the ground but the landing was surprisingly soft. "Thank you!" she screamed at the pilot but he paid her no attention. The door seemed to slide open on its own accord and she glanced at it hesitantly. "Are you coming out too?" she asked the pilot, yelling over the sound of the helicopters blades, but the pilot continued to ignore her. There was no sign that he was going to turn off the engines so she sighed, gathering up her things before awkwardly exiting the cabin.
Lou saw, now less than a quarter of a mile away, the young woman stepping out of the helicopter. He knew this meant that he had, at most, seconds left before the bird was back in the air. "Hold that chopper!" He screamed, knowing full well that between the noise of the rotors and the distance, there was almost no chance she'd be able to hear him. As he ran, he struggled to get the device slung to his back into his hands.
Willow dropped her bag on the ground. The door of the cabin started to close and she realized that one of her spell books must have somehow fallen out of her bag and was now resting on the floor of the helicopter. "Wait!" she shouted, lunging forward. The door gently hit her arm before it stopped and she looked at it strangely. "Thanks?" she said, wondering who exactly it was she was thanking. Her fingers closed around the edge of the book and she pulled it out. The door immediately continued to close and she backed away from the helicopter as it started to rise.
Great. She didn't even seem to notice him over here. The first time in ages he actually wished his tremendous stature would actually GET him more attention. Ironies never seemed to cease. As the helicopter started lifting off, he was still more than a hundred meters away, and the wind kicked up by the helicopter was blowing snow in his face pretty badly. He'd only get one shot at this, and he didn't want to miss. He charged the last few dozen meters, lining up his crude, makeshift grappling hook gun even as he shouted at the young woman "You gotta come with me! We gotta get outta here!" Even as he said it, he knew that he wasn't making a very persuasive case, but he didn't have time for a lot of nuance here.
Willow let out a startled scream when she realized there was a huge man barreling toward her with some kind of complicated contraption assembled around his body. He was shouting at her, but the words were hard to distinguish with all the noise around her. For a second she thought that he was going to attack her and she froze. Like a delayed vocal track she finally heard what he'd said. "Why?" she shouted back, "Who are you? What's going on?!"
He lined up the gun with one of the landing struts of the helicopter and fired, watching, his heart in his throat, as the metal hooks launched upwards, and shouted with joy as he saw them latch on with a loud clang, exactly as planned. "This whole place is a trap and the chopper's the only way out," he shouted at her in the seconds before the cable connecting the hook to the contraption he had in his hand went taut and lifted him off the ground. "Come with me if you don't wanna spend the next five years here!"
It was overwhelming, all the things that were happening. Willow glanced at the castle- Oz, there had been a note from Oz saying he needed help- but this guy hanging from the chopper with his hooky-contraption... Willow wasn't getting any big bad vibes from him. "Wait!" she shouted as he lifted up off the ground, "You're going to get hurt!" Frantically she jumped up just in time to grab the man's foot. It was the only thing she could think of to do, and now they were both dangling from a line attached to a helicopter. And there was snow every where. Great.
Okay, this was a bit of a precarious situation, and one he hadn't actually planned on in the way he'd envisioned his great escape scenario. What's more, he knew there were a lot of ways it could get a lot worse, all of them involving him not actually being inside the helicopter by the time it hit the barrier. He was sure he could hold on just fine, but he was suddenly starting to feel a lot less sure both about the hook, which looked like it might be bending out of shape just a bit on the landing strut above, and the girl, who didn't look like she was exactly the athletic type, holding on to his ankle.
He lifted his leg as high as he could, considering the swaying and shaking and the wind, and managed to grab hold of her with his free hand by her wrist, before tucking her under his arm where at least she'd be secure and not have to worry about falling too much. "Name's Lou," he shouted, "Nice to meet you!" He then hit the trigger on his grappling gun, which ought to have caused it to reel them in, up the vehicle above. What it did instead was give an agonized mechanical groan and then fell silent. "Oh, hell."
This was crazy- absolutely crazy. And Willow had seen some pretty crazy stuff before. Lou, as he introduced himself, manhandled her up so she wasn't dangling anymore and she gripped onto his shirt as tightly as she could.
"Willow!" she managed to shout and she closed her eyes against the wind. Oh, this was so not going to end well. What had she been thinking? This was bad. Very very Bad. With a capital B, Bad. "Is it supposed to make that noise?" she yelled, hoping Lou would be able to hear her. What the hell was going on?!
In the normal run of events, having an attractive young woman like this clinging to him for dear life might have been fairly exciting, but at the moment, he didn't really have time to think about that for more than a second or so. "Um!" He shouted, "Maybe?" He hit the trigger a few more times, without any more response than the first time. He then felt a disconcerting lurch as the hook, high above, slid another six inches closer to coming loose from its place on the helicopter's strut. Well. There didn't seem to be any very happy ending to this story.
He looked down. The ground was only about thirty feet below, and while he was sure he could survive a fall from quite a bit more than that height, it was starting to look pretty bad for this Willow chick, one way or the other. He sighed disgustedly. It would be back to the drawing board, he guessed, if he had bothered to actually draw anything out ahead of time with this machine. "Okay, new plan!" he shouted, "Hold on tight, and, uh... try to go loose otherwise?"
He let go of the machine about two seconds before the hook slipped loose, and started to fall. Lou did his best to cradle and shield her with his body before they hit the ground below...
"What do you mean, hold-" the word 'tight' was turned into a scream as Lou let go of the machine and they started falling towards the ground. Gripping Lou's shirt harder, she pulled herself together and tried to think. They didn't have very far to fall, but she knew she knew a spell that would help... There wasn't any time to say anything so she concentrated hard on a big bail of hay. There was a sharp jolt and she felt her head knock against Lou's chin. Ow. That was going to hurt later. Her muscles protested, but it hadn't been as bad as she thought it would be. She opened her eyes and saw yellow straw around her.
Lou felt the wind go out of him as he hit the ground, but it hadn't been nearly the impact that he'd thought it would be. Unfortunately, a second later, he suffered an additional blow as the hook, descending from the sky above him and the rapidly-receding helicopter, came crashing down on his head with a resounding clank. "Ow! For frigsakes!" He shouted, brushing it and the rest of the cable aside into the...hay?
He hadn't spotted it when he was up in the air, but he guessed he could have missed it. Maybe? He knew there were horses, and, more menacingly, unicorns around here. Maybe this is what they ate when they weren't trying to eat him.
He looked at the young woman laying on his chest, and couldn't help but realize, now that he could actually get a proper, not-running-and-jumping-for-dear-life look at her, that she was actually pretty cute. "Eh, um," he stammered, trying to un-derail his train of thought, "Sorry about all that, Are you okay?"
Thank god it had worked. And that they were both still alive. Lou apologized and Willow climbed off him, moving to drag the hook as far away as she could from him. It wasn't very far. Then she rounded on him, "Me- are you okay? You just got hit in the head with... that thing! And what were you thinking, jumping after the helicopter like that?! You could've been hurt! How do you not have a hook-shaped hole in your head?!"
It occurred to Willow that she'd shouted the majority of her tirade, and she took a deep breath. This was embarrassing. "Sorry," she said softly, kneeling down and checking his head again, "I shouldn't have shouted. Are you okay?"
"Well, I'm still trapped in some otherworldly castle, and my brilliant escape plan kinda blew up in my face, but..." But he had a redheaded angel leaning over him, expressing concern for him, is what. "I guess I've been worse," he finished.
"I get stuff like this all the time," he said, pointing at the hook and cable. It wasn't said with pride,m but with a certain amount of chagrin. He'd never chosen any of this, and he wasn't going to boast about it. "Honestly, I've had a lot worse. "I just hoped I might be able to get myself out of here and maybe spare you what I been going through, these past six months or so."
Now that the whirlwind of crazy helicopter hanging was over and she was sure Lou wasn't going to spontaneously succumb to what should normally have been fatal wounds, Willow had a chance to get things straight.
And nothing was making any sense. Best to start from square one- and that was Oz. "I'm looking for a friend of mine. His name is... uh, sorry, his name is Oz." God, it still hurt to say his name. She thought that part of it would be over already. But some days it just came back and... "He said he was in trouble and needed me. Do you know where I can find him?"
"Second star to the right and straight on until morning, I'm guessing," he said, not without sympathy. "I ain't met anyone by that name the whole time I been here. Mind you, there's a lot of new folks around, these past couple of weeks, so I guess it ain't impossible. Usually, though, whatever you get on that ticket that gets you on that chopper turns out to be nothing but a heap of lies." He frowned, not happy to be giving her bad news. "Sorry."
"No, no... no, that's not right." Willow sank down to sit on her heels. "Are you sure?" she asked. How could she have been so stupid. Of course it hadn't been a letter from Oz. But maybe Oz didn't want them to know his name. He was a cautious guy. "How about a werewolf," she asked, knowing it was a long shot, "Is there a werewolf here?"
"I think so," he said. "About... maybe three months ago? I guess I saw one. At least that's what I got told. I never saw it turn into anything other than a jumbo, giant-sized wolf, though. Calls himself Loke. Through, like, telepathy and stuff. Creepy stuff, let me tell you." He stopped for a moment, trying to put the pieces of her disconnected questions together and failing. "Why, was there something about a werewolf in that letter or something? Like, some kind of wolf man is after this Oz guy or something?"
Loke... if that was Oz she didn't know why he'd chosen the name Loke. But a werewolf was a werewolf and there probably weren't that many of them around. "My... friend, Oz, he's a werewolf. So, maybe that's him, right? Could be, right?" Hopefully she didn't look too needy...
Lou didn't think it was too likely, but didn't see any reason to disappoint her if he didn't need to. From what he'd seen, he wasn't sure that Loke wasn't just some big, dumb animal that someone had taught to talk using the limited power of his mind. He'd seen stranger things. "They got this, like, phone system here," he said, helpfully. "You probably got one in the helicopter. Assumin' it didn't break. I can show you how to use it, and ask around if anyone's seen this..." he was going to say 'dude', but the term didn't seem to fit the mental image she was painting of this Oz guy. "...friend,"
As if on cue, he heard, from a short-and-dwindling distance away, the sound of a buzzing electrical motor and flapping plastic wings, accompanied, today, by the digital music from the original Legend of Zelda's dungeons. "Speak of the friggin' devil and he shall appear to piss you off," he said, looking over at his flying phone-beast, Miss Piggy, as the VCR-sized robotic contraption finally caught up with him.
Willow fumbled in her pockets and then realized that she'd put the cell phone she'd been given into her bag. Which was who knows how far away from them. "My phone's with all my other stuff, over..." Willow did a circle and spotted the castle, "I'm guessing over there," she amended.
The theme song attracted her attention and she looked over to the flying thing coming towards them. "Is that going to attack us?" she asked, "Should we be running right now?"
"Only if you're worried about it attacking your childhood memories with its stupid crap," he said, swatting at it. It dodged him easily. It had gotten entirely too accustomed to his periodic acts of physical aggression and had seemingly developed all the subroutines it needed to keep itself intact. "I built this flying heap of crap a couple of months ago and now I can't get it to leave me alone or to..." he turned his head fully towards the device, shouting the final two words at it, "...SHUT. UP."
Willow extended her arms to the... thing. It was kind of a little cute. "What does it do?" she asked.
"Aside from the obvious," he asked rhetorically. "Plays video games, movies, stuff like that. Plus all the stuff that a normal cel phone and one of the castle's phones can do," he pointed out some of the components that made it up. "I built it out of a bunch of different stuff, and it still does most of what those machines did, plus a bunch of new stuff. Watch it, though, it's got a lazer beam thing, and it can be pretty unfriendly some..." he watched with bemusement as it fluttered down, coming to rest peaceably on her hands, seeming to regard her with interest and curiosity, "...times."
"Hey you," Willow cooed. "Lazer beams, huh? So I shouldn't drop it or make any sudden movements?"
It was a fascinating piece of technology. Willow could see all the components that Lou had mentioned. "I'm sure she comes in handy once in a while. Is it a she? Or he? And can she lead us back to my stuff?"
"I call it Miss Piggy," he said, covering his eyes with one hand as he laughed at the ridiculousness of it. "So I guess she can be a she if you want. Just as long as I don't got to see the male version, you know?"
He leaned down towards Miss Piggy, which observed him with one tiny camera eye as the others continued to study this newcomer. "What do you say, girl? Feel like earning all that electricity you keep sucking up today? Do me a solid and lead the pretty lady back to her phone?"
A moment later, it lifted off of her hands, whizzing about in the air a bit and then making a bee-line back in the direction they had come from. "Now we get to see if she's actually doing something right for a change or just going for a re-charge somewhere," he said, ruefully.
"Well then, lead the way Miss Piggy!" Willow added, smiling at Lou. Willow followed Miss Piggy, taking care to walk in step with Lou. She still didn't believe that he was completely fine after the ordeal they'd just been through.
"So, tell me more about this castle. What's so bad about it that you were willing to risk your life to get out?"
"More of a risk to my dignity than my life, really," he said, though he supposed he didn't exactly know if that was true or not. He had no idea what would happen if he hit the far end of the barrier while he was outside of that helicopter, and didn't really want to know. "Still."
"Let's see. The whole place is surrounded by some kind of magical forcefield. Seems like the folks in the choppers can get in and out just fine, but anyone else? Just pukes and then passes out if they try to get too far away. Nobody ever gets out on their own, and nobody knows who's even in charge here. Sometimes," his voice went cold, as some genuine fear crept in, "People just go missing in the middle of the night, and we never see them again. No idea what happens to them. There's monsters and evil holograms, an'... all sorts of craziness." He figured the unicorns and the time travel could wait until she'd caught up. "Some folks have been here years. I've been here maybe six months. I figure I long since got fired from my job, lost my apartment, an' had all my stuff sold by my landlord. So, you know. There's that."
It was a lot to take in. Willow glanced at Lou and as she looked him over she didn't see any reason as to why he would be lying. And it would explain why he'd tried to hitch a ride from the chopper. She looked around the grounds for any sign of the monsters or evil Lou was talking about but it looked like plain regular deserted castle grounds.
"No way out, huh?" she said, her heart sinking. Far from home, from her friends- what were they going to think? That some demon had come and killed her? They were going to worry... "Is there any way of sending a message out? Letting... people know that you're okay?"
And here she'd though Oz was coming back to her. Willow blinked away the burning in her eyes.
Oh, hell. He hadn't meant to upset her that much. He figured just giving it to her straight without too much drama would make it easier. Hell, he didn't even figure she'd believe all of this stuff at once, and it would take some time to sink in. He momentarily thought about offering her a hug, but put that out of his head quickly. Instead, awkwardly, he gave her what he hoped was a comforting pat on the shoulder. "Well, I've been workin' on that problem for a little bit. It don't seem like there's anyone else around here that's got it in them to actually build anything, so it's sort of down to me," hearing the words escape from his mouth actually depressed him quite a bit, now that he thought about it. "But so far, uh, no. Not really."
The pat on her shoulder was slightly reassuring and a bit awkward; nonetheless, Willow smiled at Lou. At least he was trying. And, she reasoned, there was still this werewolf, Loke, to look forward to. Even if it wasn't Oz (which she realized she was starting to think even though she didn't want to) maybe he knew something about Oz.
Yeah, she though, she just had to think about this positively. Just because she was stuck here didn't mean that the others couldn't find her. One way or another she'd be back home soon- they always worked things like this out.
"Is the castle over a hellmouth?" she asked, "Back home we're over one and... well, it sounds exactly like what you said. Except the whole forcefield thing."
"Hellmouth if I know," he said, shrugging. He had no idea what the word meant, but what the hellmouth, right? "Nobody seems to know what's going on. We've found a couple of different things that seem like they might be involved in all this, but it's all confusing. We don't even really know if it's magic or some kinda high-tech thing."
"Sometimes they're interconnected, magic and technology. So... what happens now? Do I just wait around until someone attacks me?" Fatigue was starting to catch up with her- between classes, helping Buffy with patrol and finding the ticket in her dorm room... there hadn't been much chance for a nap. "Where do I sleep? I just accept that I can't do anything? Isn't there something I can try? Not that I don't think you guys haven't tired your best..." Hopefully he wouldn't be offended by that. But she owed it to herself to at least try.
"Well, where you can sleep, you've got a couple of options there," he said, "An' I can show you some of the better ones and some of the worse ones, so you know what you're getting into here. I gotta say, you're havin' an easier time with all of this than I'd be if I were in your shoes. If my life hadn't been a roller-coaster of crazy the last couple of years, I don't think I'd be buyin' any of this stuff myself."
Willow smiled ruefully, "Something like this... things happen all the time in Sunnydale, demons and magic and the like. My friends will realize that I'm gone and they'll find a way to get me back. I know they will. A couple years ago I would be freaking out, but I'm either going to wake up, or my friends will come get me."
Buffy, Xander, Giles- Willow knew that they'd do whatever it took to get her out of here. They were always there for her and they'd come through for her this time as well. One hundred percent certain.
"I guess I hope you're right," he said, a bit skeptically. Unless her friends weree a lot more resourcefull than the friends of anyone else trapped here, it didn't seem very likely to him. "If they do, I hope they bring along a ride big enough for all of us."
He pointed to where Miss Piggy was buzzing around above the ground a hundred meters or so ahead, above the pile of Willow's belongings. "Looks like the little bug did good for a change."
"Thank you Miss Piggy!" she called to the mechanical contraption. Now if she could only remember where she'd put that phone...
She couldn't help but think that Lou clearly didn't have as much faith in her Scooby gang as she did, but that was understandable. He didn't know them, but she wouldn't let him shake her belief in them.
And she knew why she wasn't freaking out about all this but most people she knew would make up any kind of excuse. What was it he'd said? Roller-coaster crazy life? "I don't mean to pry, but, what did you mean when you said you'd been through some crazy stuff?"
"Well, I wasn't always this way, an' it wasn't by choice, lemmie tell you”, he said, tapping his chest with his hands. “One day, I guess, mysterious powers from beyond this world just picked me to be the big hero..." This was true only in the broadest sense. The mysterious forces were a pair of alien college students named Zinnack and Yoof, and they had chosen him entirely by accident. But he'd told the story so many times over the years that sometimes he liked to spice it up a bit just to keep it interesting for himself. For a couple of months, he'd taken to telling people he got so muscular as a psychosomatic reaction to playing so many football video games in high school. "Then, bam, one day I just wake up like this. Super-strong, super-tough, fast-healing, weird ESP powers and stuff. Ever since then, I been fightin' demons and aliens and ghosts and draculas all the time."
"Friggin' pain in the ass, is what it is.” He stooped down, picking up Willow’s bag nad handed it to her. “All I ever wanted was to be this ordinary teenaged dude, relaxing, goin' to parties and getting high once in a while. Instead, I had to be this friggin' 'chosen one', and my life's been nothin' but hassles ever since." He shrugged, dismissively. "But what am I gonna do, right? Try to be grateful or whatever? That's what a lot of people tell me. I guess not a lot of folks can relate to problems like that, but I'll tell you, most folks? I'd trade my problems for theirs in a minute."
Willow wasn't going to mention his... unique stature, but from the sounds of it he wanted someone to talk to about it. Mysterious powers, fighting demons and ghosts, the power- sounded like someone Willow knew. A best-friend sort of someone.
Willow accepted the bag and started looking through it and then stopped. She had to say something. "I know someone like you. Didn't ask for it but all of a sudden she got the whole world dumped on her shoulders. Got this power and then all of a sudden she's expected just to give up her own life and, oh, there goes any chance of being a normal teenager! Her power's less conspicuous, but... it's not fair. It's not fair at all, but... she tries. She still goes to parties, and she hangs out with friends- like me, and don't read into that, but she does have friends. You don't have to be grateful for it- it absolutely stinks. But you don't have to let it take over your life. You can work with it, it doesn't have to be all bad."
Hopefully that wasn't as cheesy as she imagined it was.
"Sounds like she got lucky, then," he said. "The only people who'll hang out with me anymore are the super-powered oddballs that actually like all of this stuff. Everyone else's been scared off a long time ago." He shrugged, thinking about the friends he used to have, and how much he used to be like them. Peas in a pod. "Can't say I blame 'em. I'd have probably done the same after, like, the eighth alien invasion that just HAPPENED to be within walking distance of my house." That was an exaggeration, he knew. There had only been five events that could really be called 'invasions' in the past few years, but the point stood. "I guess if anything, I should be kinda grateful that things are a bit quieter here. Monsters and holograms and stuff notwithstanding."
He pointed towards the village, off in the far distance. The broken remains of the crashed helicopter, and the workshop he'd been building around it could be faintly seen there. "Speakin' of which. You were asking where you could sleep. There's a village over there. Bunch of abandoned houses. Like a ghost town. I don't recommend it. You're pretty alone out there, if you get into trouble, an' there's pretty serious monster action over there."
He pointed at the castle. "Castle's a bit better, but it means you're never more than a few feet down the hall from a lot of freaks and weridos that can be dangerous in their own ways. Draculas and stuff. I don't go in there much."
He then gestured, more generally, across the lake. "There's a bunch of little houses and cabins scattered around over there. They're pretty swank, and I claimed on of them for myself. All abandoned, too. But again, it's kinda out in the open."
"An' then there's the hotel. That's pretty much your safest bet, even if it means you don't exactly got a place of your own."
"Just so you know, I don't mind super-powered oddballs. Had previous experience with them, you could say, and I don't mind them so much." Was it so bad to be wishing Buffy was here with her?
Willow looked in each direction that Lou pointed in. Abandoned ghost towns weren't her idea of good lodgings. "Freaks and weirdos, huh?" she asked, wondering what kind of people lived here. And being alone right now wasn't something that was high on Willow's list of priorities. "Which way's the hotel then?" she asked. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to get completely settled anyway. No telling how long she would actually be here.
"That's kind of a complicated question. Come with me, an' I'll try an' explain when we get where we're goin'." He gestured towards the castle. "That place is sort of our first stop on the way," he explained.
As he started walking, he asked her "If I'm not intrudin' or nothin', what kind of experience do you got with the super-powered crowd?"
Willow hesitated before answering. Talking about Buffy without saying her name was one thing, but the whole slaying thing was really supposed to be a secret. Not that they were that good at keeping it a secret but... Then again, she was in the middle of nowhere.
"That person I told you about? My best friend, Buffy, she's a Slayer. Giles says," What was it that he always used to say? "That every generation gets a slayer. A chosen one with the strength and skill to fight vampires and evil and demons. Except she never chose to be that one. Just another high school student who has this extraordinary power. And my b- uh, friend, Oz, he's a werewolf. So you know, that makes things complicated on full moons. I've learnt a little bit of magic, and there's this ex-demon who keeps hanging around my best friend Xander... We're a pretty oddball little group. The Scooby gang. They're the one's who'll come and save me..."
Lou listened to her ramble, nodding as he went. He had nothing against a good ramble; he was guilty of it himself from time to time, and it was an interesting story. "Sounds like you guys got saddled with a lot of the same type of crap I did. I got a bunch of... friends, I guess?" He was still reluctant to use the term to describe the "team" that had forced themselves upon him, but after a couple of years, he couldn't keep pretending he felt nothing for them but the irritation he did at their first half-dozen encounters. "They got a bunch of powers and problems a lot like mine. Not as impressive, though, 'cause I guess I got picked to be the big leader. Like I had any choice in the matter." He shook his head.
"Buffy, though, huh? Some parents, right? The names they saddle their kids with. Oughta be a law, I say."
"I always wondered if we were the only ones who were dealing with all the demons and vampires and near-apocalypses. It's kind of, comforting to know that we weren't the only group who have to deal with all the dooms day stuff. Not that I'm happy you had to go through that stuff too, but... It's nice to know we weren't alone." That wasn't too terrible a thought, was it?
"I like the name Buffy," she said, impartially, hiding a smile. "It's helpful sometimes- you wouldn't expect a blonde girl named Buffy to be as powerful as she is."
"I guess that makes sense. You know, my guys wanted me to put on a costume and call myself 'Mister Terrific'? God, what a bunch of nerds they can be sometimes." He chuckled a bit, thinking of the ways this 'Buffy' girl's situation mirrored his own and what he'd do in her shoes. "I guess it got a lot easier to deal with all the people who gave her a hard time about her name once she could chuck 'em across a room or whatever, huh?"
"But yeah, I kinda wondered about that sort of thing, too. When there'd be some crashed alien spaceship that was gonna blow wide open if I wasn't there to keep it from blowin' up the world or somethin'. What happens when it lands somewhere else an' I never hear about it, right? I mean, I guess that one of the powers I got also made all the crazy stuff come straight to me from wherever they were, so it was maybe less of a problem, but still." He figured he'd get into the whole 'we're all from different worlds and universes' thing later, too. One thing at a time.
"Oh, were they lobbying to become a unitard group? I can't imagine you in a unitard," Willow giggled. She couldn't help it- the image was too amusing. "Thankfully we never dressed up in costumes. Well, other than during Halloween, but you're supposed to dress up then. You're not supposed to turn into whatever your costume is because of a spell, but that was only one year...." Willow frowned, thinking about all her Halloween nights. The last couple hadn't turned out so well.
"Anyway, I think we got a lot of them because of the Hellmouth, the thing I was talking about earlier. That and I think vampires and demons are attracted to Buffy. Just how dangerous are the monsters here?"
"Well, I seen one of them tear through solid steel, run about a hundred miles an hour, an' heal from a broken neck in just a couple of minutes, so... pretty bad," he said, seriously, rubbing his neck at the memory. "I had a tough time putting that one down. I only seen one of them once, but I hear they're all over the place, so maybe I just got lucky." He guessed being coy about it for too long wasn't really in her best interests, so he may as well just spit it out. "They look like unicorns, if you can believe that. I dunno if they really are, or if they just look that way. I don't got a lot of experience with them, you know. Guess it serves me right for not goin' to see them at the zoo when I was a kid," he joked.
The unicorns sounded pretty monstrous to her and she looked around them just to make sure there wasn't one heading at them. "And if one of them decides, Hey, I'd sure like a redheaded girl right now- what do I do?" She pulled out the cellphone, "Call someone on this and hope they have Sonic-like speed?"
"I'm pretty quick. Good strong legs and all that. An' I've told people if it's a life or death thing they should give me a call, but, you know... it ain't like I can make any promises or anything like that. I can maybe outrun a car on a street, but one of those things puts me to shame. If you want," he offered, a bit awkwardly, "We could hang out for a couple of days, until you've got the hang of this place. You know. If you want."
It was a kind proposition and the place was still very unfamiliar. And thus far it had proven to be quite an adrenaline-inducing environment. "It would be nice to have someone to show me around," she agreed. And it was always nice to make a new friend. "Plus, I don't think Miss Piggy would have any objections to that either."
"Yeah, really," he said, grinning. The flying device was buzzing around her head excitedly, and began to play some music from Super Mario Bros 2 in excitement. "That reminds me, I should show you how the phones work around here," he said.
Willow flipped open the phone. She'd only seen a couple cell phones before and this one seemed impossibly small. There was a green button and a red button and she already guessed what those did, "Call and disconnect?" she asked, showing Lou the buttons she was talking about.
"It's weird. They're not even really phones. They're more like... you know about bulletin board systems?" Despite his vast repository of alien high-tech know-how, he remained a creature of the 1990s, and the Internet was mostly after his time. "You can't talk in real time. You just leave messages for each other. Voice or text, whatever you want. Here, lemmie show you..."
He gestured for Miss Piggy to come over to him, and for a wonder, she did. He then called up the recent conversation he'd had with Damon on the system and replayed it for her, nudging the buttons on Miss Piggy's belly which constituted the remains of the phone's controls. When he was done, he was laughing again at the way the exchange had gone.
"Oh, I see. And so anyone can answer a message I send out?"
And then she realized what their conversation was about. "There's actually the Wicked Witch of the West here?" she asked skeptically.
"Like I said to Damon Dillweed there, it's probably just some kook in a costume or somethin'. I mean, hell, maybe it is a real witch, an' she's just pullin' peoples' legs with the Wizard of Oz bit, you know?" He shrugged. Whoever she was, he hadn't met her, and didn't know. "That Damon guy seems like the type that makes it pretty easy to pull his leg. Probably whoever she was was just screwin' with him."
He tapped the phone panel on Miss Piggy's belly and went on, "You can do what that guy was doing an' leave a message for everyone all at once and just see who responds, or, if you've got their private number, you can call them personally. It ain't totally reliable, though. Some people get their phones lost or stolen or broken or whatever, or else just don't carry them around. So, you know, it's anyone's guess if your message'll actually get to whoever you're leavin' it for."
"Reassuring," Willow muttered. "And how do I figure out my own private number? Should I send out a, hey everyone, my name's Willow, please don't kill me? message? Or do people generally not do that?" She looked up at Lou (he was really tall, looking up meant really looking up). He didn't seem to mind her pestering him with questions and she gave him a smile for his troubles.
He smiled back; he couldn't help it. There was just something so... rosy about her grin. In fact, he found himself blushing just a bit, and quickly looked away, turning his attention towards Miss Piggy. "Got that covered," he said, covering for himself. "Just, uh, here. Give me a private call at this number..." he read out his own number to her, "And I can tell you what yours is when I get it."
"Okay, let's see if this works..." Following the steps Lou had shown her she punched in the number and left a message.
There was a small, electronic chirp from somewhere inside of Miss Piggy's electronic guts, and Lou quickly called up Willow's message, which he then played back to her. "Simple as that," he said. "An' here's your number for you," at which he rattled it off for her. As he was closing it down, he noticed something he'd missed earlier. Scrolling back a couple of messages, he called Willow over to have a look at something.
"Lookit this. Seems like some guy's holdin' a pool party in a couple of days. Seems like if your buddy Oz is there, or anyone who knows him, that'd be a good place to ask around."
Willow read the message... from beside Lou. She would do over the shoulder if she could but... that would never work.
Lou was right- if there were going to be a lot of people there, one of them might know about Oz. "A pool party could be fun! But... it's indoors, right? It's a little chilly out here for a pool party..."
"Says it's inside the hotel, which is where we're headin' anyway, so I can show you. I only been there once, but it's indoors an' heated, so, you know, it should be fine." He figured that a lot of the message was probably pretty confusing to her, but with the two of them heading for the time room right now, a certain amount of it was about to be cleared up one way or the other.
"Good, just making sure. And... the part where it says 'hundred centuries in the future'... that's some kind of slang or something, right?"
"Um, sort of," he said. "Here, uh, follow me for a second, I think I see something up ahead that might, well... maybe not make anything make more sense, but maybe make it clearer."
He jogged a short distance off to the left, where he saw an irregular disturbance in the blanket of snow just a short way out of their way. He was pretty sure he knew what it was. Digging his way down under the frosty surface with his hands, he soon stood up, brushing the loose snow off of a dimetrodon's skull. One of the ones left over from the dinosaur invasion this past summer. "When I first got here, these critters were scamperin' all over the place. Dinosaurs and pterodactyls and all sorts of prehistoric stuff. All dead now." He levered the jaw opened and closed like a puppet a few times, saying "Rarr, rarr, rarr," as he did so.
"Time is pretty weird around here." He handed the skull to Willow for her inspection.
Lou playing with a dinosaur head wasn't exactly comic but it did ease a bit of the tension she was starting to feel in her shoulders. "So that belonged to a dinosaur that was living and killed... here? That's... I can deal with that. I think..."
Finally Willow accepted the skull. It looked real, like the ones at the museum. So real it was unreal. "This can't be right," she muttered. Her eyes went to Lou and she waited for him to tell her he had been joking.
"You want, you can dig out the rest of the skeleton there," he said, pointing at the heap he'd dug it out of. "You'll see the damn things all over the place. Friggin' mess. And uh," he said, not really wanting to correct her or come off as too much of a nerd. He wasn't. He just watched a lot of Discovery Channel, and happened to remember this fact from some special he'd seen on the topic, "That's a dimetrodon. Not actually a dinosaur. Actually more like a really early mammal. Could have been kinda aunt or uncle to us, I guess?"
He gestured for her to follow as he began back to the castle again. "Pretty much the second I got off my chopper, I had one of them tryin' to eat my head. A little while later, they were all skeletons like this. Time travel crap like this. Friggin' pain in the ass."
Willow left the dinosaur - the dimetrodon - head in the snow and followed Lou. "The second I got off the chopper I was back on it dangling from the leg of this guy with a grappling hook. And then he told me all this stuff about how I was trapped here and couldn't leave and he showed me a dinosaur head.... But I think you have me beat with that one," she admitted, nudging Lou's arm lightly to show that she was joking.
"Why are we heading to the castle? Shortcut to the hotel?" she asked, finally noticing there wasn't what she would guess was a hotel near by.
"Yeah, basically," he said. "The other way to get to the hotel takes a couple of hundred centuries. This way's lots faster." He walked up to the castle's wooden door and pushed it open for her, glad to get in out of the snow himself. He stamped his feet on the doormat before heading in before her.
The castle looked just as much a castle on the inside as it had on the outside. There was a sheet of paper in the lobby and Willow picked it up. It looked crumpled and bits of the edges were missing. It was basically the same information that Lou had already told her. Sticking it back on the ground for lack of a better place to put it she hurried to catch up with Lou.
"So it looks like everyone here is resigned to staying here aren't they..." it was a little depressing.
"All the losers are, maybe," he said, grinning. "You saw that workshop over in that village? I'm seein' if I can rebuild a helicopter that crashed here a couple of months back. Hell, one time I even built this grappling hook gun thing an' tried to snag one of them whirly-birds in mid-air. You should have been there," he said, nudging her back.
"Yeah," Willow laughed, "I heard that went real well. Hey Lou, I thought you said to stay away from the castle? Lots of crazies and all that stuff?"
"Yeah, just don't make eye contact. We'll be out of here in a minute," he said, hustling along. "It's just up this way." He made his way to the wide wooden double doors of the time room and bumped them open, revealing an octoganal art gallery with one painting hanging on one of each of four walls. "Okay, believe it or not, this is where all the dinosaurs came from, as near as anyone can tell. This is where things start to get a little weird."
"Start to get a little weird?" Willow asked dubiously. "Wonder how they fit through the door..."
The room was huge, and with the red walls and grand floor... it looked pretty snazzy. "This place is pretty impressive," she admitted, going over to a painting with a tree and flowers and some guy who was trying to crawl away from.... the planet. "These paintings are nice. I like them."
"Way I hear it, they just knocked them down. Then a week or two later, the doors were back up again, easy as you please, like they'd been there for a hundred years. I gave up on tryin' to figure that part out a long time ago." In fact, he had given up trying to figure it out about five seconds after he gave it his first moment's consideration. He really hated time travel stuff. "The bigger deal is how they got into this room in the first place." He walked over to the painting corresponding with the golden age, and gestured for her to follow. "Uh, here, come over here and hold on tight to me," he said. He actually didn't know if physical contact was necessary to travel through together; he'd never gone through one of these things with someone else before. For the moment, though, he was willing to assume.
Willow wandered over to the painting Lou was standing in front of. Hold on tight... did that mean... what was going to happen? But, she felt like she could trust Lou. And they already got the awkward first touches out of the way when she was holding onto him for dear life as they swung from the helicopter. Willow decided to go for it.
"Just, hold on tight like... this? Is this okay?" she asked, taking Lou's hand and putting her other hand on his arm. "Why, what are you going to do?"
"Something weird," he said, gripping her hand in his. He poked the button under the painting, and the world dissolved all around the two of them, replacing itself momentarily with a curved wall of paintings at the end of an olympic-sized swimming pool in a posh and futuristic hotel. "Like I said. Shortcut."
The world seemed to melt away and was replaced with... Willow blinked. "What?" she asked, "But how did... This isn't normal, is it? How did that happen? Magic? Had to be magic right, because, non-magic things don't do this, do they..."
Gently Willow pulled her arm away from Lou and moved to the edge of the pool. Dipping her arm in she pulled it away wet- nope, not an illusion. Oh, it would make so much more sense if this was an illusion. "So, this is the hotel then?"
"Yep. Hotel Fortunada," he said, shrugging. "Don't ask me how it works. Time travel stuff is mostly way over my head. And I say this as a guy that once actually built a workin' time machine. So, you know," he rolled his eyes, frowning helplessly. "But we're standing right where we were a second ago, just some time way off in the future, after the whole castle's been knocked down and replaced with some giant pleasure resort."
"Giant pleasure resort- that's lucky. And I'm supposed to stay here? How reliable is this... time travel thing?"
"Pretty much one hundred per cent," he said. "Seems like it screwed up around the time that all the dinosaurs and stuff came through, but that's the only time I ever heard of the system goin' down. It's weird, too. You spend an hour here, and then go back, you won't arrive at the same time you left. You'll be back an hour later, too. It's almost like it's just four different places you're gettin' teleported to. Except, I guess, some people did some experiments with changing the future, and it worked and stuff, so, ehh," he grunted. "You can stay here if you want to. It's safer and nicer than the other places, but I can show you those, too, if you want. Seems like someone's already payin' all the bills for us here, so don't worry about payin' your tab with future-dollars or whatever. Or, uh... future euros? I dunno."
"Can I decide after I see some more of this place? It... doesn't look too bad. It just seems..." She glanced at the painting. "Like it shouldn't work. Like any second it's going to stop working and that'll be that. I'll be trapped here and my friends won't ever be able to find me. I can check out the room before I take it, right?"
"I think it's pretty much yours one way or the other, actually," he said, leading the way to the door. "I got a room here I never pay for and only sleep in maybe one day out of four, as well as the place I got back outside of the castle there. Seems like they got a room set up for everyone."
The hotel itself looked incredibly upscale and... expensive. "Does anyone else stay here?" she asked, wondering what kind of company there would be. The dazzle of it was slowly winning her over, despite the rather unconventional method of entrance.
"Some people. Seems like not many. I asked about it, one time, and apparently we're on kind of an off-season right now. Sometimes you'll still see tourists and stuff, though. Sometimes some of them are even aliens. Saw these giant bug things once. Gave me the creeps." He was walking and talking, heading up to the main counter in the middle of the hotel's first floor. "Aside from that, I've only seen like one or two other guys from the castle. I dunno why. If I didn't have my whole escape plan goin', I'd probably spend a lot of my time here. I don't know what anyone else's excuse is."
"It is a nice place," Willow agreed. There was a lady at the counter Lou walked her towards, who smiled at them. She looked pleasant enough and Willow instigated the conversation, "Hi."
"Hello," the lady responded, very politely. "You must be Willow Rosenberg. Are you here to check in to your room?"
Willow smiled at the lady and turned, half facing away, to Lou. She was trying to be discreet, but that usually didn't work for her. "How does she know my name," Willow hissed, "I just got here!"
"You haven't heard? You're a giant superstar in the future. There's statues of you everywhere." Lou smirked, not especially seriously.
Willow's eyes went wide and she momentarily believed him. "But how am I still alive in the future? I've never been here before... unless... I'm not, am I?"
"Nah, just messing with you," he said, playfully, laughing. "I think they know who everyone is. Like the tickets and the phones. It's probably all one big deal."
That was a better explanation. If she really was a superstar she might have to disappear and go back to the castle. "That's a relief. Don't do that!" she chastised lightly. "But next time, I won't be so gullible!"
Turning back to the lady, who either hadn't heard (unlikely) or just pretended she hadn't (more likely), Willow said, "I guess I am here to check out my room. It's not far away, is it?"
"You'll be staying in the Gamma section of our hotel, Mrs. Rosenberg. Here is your room number and access key. Do you need some assistance with your luggage or perhaps a tour around our facility?"
"Thank you," Willow said, taking the keycard. Then she looked up at Lou, "Do we need help?" she asked him.
Lou's desire not to do any hard work that could be avoided warred internally with his desire to impress the girl. In the end, after a moment or two of indecision, the latter won out. "Nah, I can get your bags for you if you want. It's no problem," He held out his hands to her.
"Looks like we'll be fine for now," Willow told the lady at the counter with a smile. She handed over her bags to Lou and smiled at him gratefully. "And we're heading to Guest Room five, second floor Gamma...." she trailed off, looking at Lou expectantly.
"No problem. That's just a couple doors down from my room," he said, tossing her bags casually over his shoulder. "This whole place, all this friggin' Greek alphabet stuff. Whatever, right? They don't even use English writing anymore, except where they put it up special for us, but somehow they still use alpha, beta, gamma and stuff? Please." He rolled his eyes. "Come on, there's an elevator just over there," he said, pointing at the corner of the building.
"We're still using Greek letters in our time, thousands of years after they first started using them. It's been around for such a long time... sort of timeless, don't you think?" she asked, pressing the button to call the elevator.
"Is it just me or is this building kind of... triangle-y?"
"I guess. Or, like," he groped for the word he was looking for and failed. "Sexangley? 'Cause it's kind of flattened on the corners, so there's like six sides, and three of them are just really small? Does that make sense?"
Willow thought about it for a moment and then giggled. "Not really," she admitted, "But then again I'm starting to think that things aren't meant to make sense."
She climbed into the elevator, unable to keep from touching the shiny edges. "You were right- it is nice here. Even the elevators are nice."
"Yeah. If it weren't for the bug people, the lonliness, the escape plan, and the fact that if I stay here long enough, I'm pretty sure it'll get blown up by some alien invasion or something, I'd probably stay here all the time. The rest of the city ain't bad either, if you don't mind everything being kind of... Star-Trekky, you know?"
"Oh, oh, like... Star-Trekky stuff?" she finished rather lamely. "I do like those cool gadgets they show in movies that are in the future, they're not so bad. And... maybe we can convince other people to come live here too."
Make that two things she was worried about here- the time travel required and the lack of other 'guests'.
"I say if they're happy being miserable and uncomfortable an' gettin' attacked by unicorns and stuff, let 'em," he said, as the elevator made its quick ascent to the second floor and then opened up with a soft chime. "People are weird that way. I don't waste my time tryin' to change them. Let 'em do their own thing, right?"
"I suppose they won't like doing anything other than that," Willow conceded, leaving the elevator and standing there, trying not to look like she was waiting for Lou to lead the way. "Are there signs anywhere?"
"If you wanna call them that," he replied, sarcastically, pointing at a wall-mounted plackard written in an incomprehensible jumble of alien letters. He could sometimes - not always, but sometimes - make out things written in alien languages, like Chinese, or French. These ones he had some real trouble with. "All the room doors have signs written in english, though. Come on, it's this way," he said, gesturing.
Rating: PG13, probably.
Time period: Modern, Golden Age
Location: A short distance outside of the castle, the Time Room, The Hotel Fortunada
Relative Date: At about the same time as this post
Status: Closed
The sound from the helicopter didn't lend itself well to conversation and it also didn't help that the guy flying it wasn't exactly Mr. Personable. But they were lowering down to the ground and Willow could see a large castle in the distance. She couldn't help but wonder exactly what kind of trouble Oz had gotten into.
Lou heard the sound of the helicopter somewhere off in the distance, and his head immediately snapped upwards, scanning the sky. He'd been ready and waiting for this for weeks. Well, mostly ready. He'd been on the toilet once and eating another time, so he'd missed those chances. But not this time. This time he'd get his white whale. He checked the strap around his chest he'd used to secure the device he'd built for just such an occasion and set off at a run for the area, a good half-mile away, that the helicopter seemed to be descending towards.
There was a little bit of swaying as the helicopter came closer to the ground but the landing was surprisingly soft. "Thank you!" she screamed at the pilot but he paid her no attention. The door seemed to slide open on its own accord and she glanced at it hesitantly. "Are you coming out too?" she asked the pilot, yelling over the sound of the helicopters blades, but the pilot continued to ignore her. There was no sign that he was going to turn off the engines so she sighed, gathering up her things before awkwardly exiting the cabin.
Lou saw, now less than a quarter of a mile away, the young woman stepping out of the helicopter. He knew this meant that he had, at most, seconds left before the bird was back in the air. "Hold that chopper!" He screamed, knowing full well that between the noise of the rotors and the distance, there was almost no chance she'd be able to hear him. As he ran, he struggled to get the device slung to his back into his hands.
Willow dropped her bag on the ground. The door of the cabin started to close and she realized that one of her spell books must have somehow fallen out of her bag and was now resting on the floor of the helicopter. "Wait!" she shouted, lunging forward. The door gently hit her arm before it stopped and she looked at it strangely. "Thanks?" she said, wondering who exactly it was she was thanking. Her fingers closed around the edge of the book and she pulled it out. The door immediately continued to close and she backed away from the helicopter as it started to rise.
Great. She didn't even seem to notice him over here. The first time in ages he actually wished his tremendous stature would actually GET him more attention. Ironies never seemed to cease. As the helicopter started lifting off, he was still more than a hundred meters away, and the wind kicked up by the helicopter was blowing snow in his face pretty badly. He'd only get one shot at this, and he didn't want to miss. He charged the last few dozen meters, lining up his crude, makeshift grappling hook gun even as he shouted at the young woman "You gotta come with me! We gotta get outta here!" Even as he said it, he knew that he wasn't making a very persuasive case, but he didn't have time for a lot of nuance here.
Willow let out a startled scream when she realized there was a huge man barreling toward her with some kind of complicated contraption assembled around his body. He was shouting at her, but the words were hard to distinguish with all the noise around her. For a second she thought that he was going to attack her and she froze. Like a delayed vocal track she finally heard what he'd said. "Why?" she shouted back, "Who are you? What's going on?!"
He lined up the gun with one of the landing struts of the helicopter and fired, watching, his heart in his throat, as the metal hooks launched upwards, and shouted with joy as he saw them latch on with a loud clang, exactly as planned. "This whole place is a trap and the chopper's the only way out," he shouted at her in the seconds before the cable connecting the hook to the contraption he had in his hand went taut and lifted him off the ground. "Come with me if you don't wanna spend the next five years here!"
It was overwhelming, all the things that were happening. Willow glanced at the castle- Oz, there had been a note from Oz saying he needed help- but this guy hanging from the chopper with his hooky-contraption... Willow wasn't getting any big bad vibes from him. "Wait!" she shouted as he lifted up off the ground, "You're going to get hurt!" Frantically she jumped up just in time to grab the man's foot. It was the only thing she could think of to do, and now they were both dangling from a line attached to a helicopter. And there was snow every where. Great.
Okay, this was a bit of a precarious situation, and one he hadn't actually planned on in the way he'd envisioned his great escape scenario. What's more, he knew there were a lot of ways it could get a lot worse, all of them involving him not actually being inside the helicopter by the time it hit the barrier. He was sure he could hold on just fine, but he was suddenly starting to feel a lot less sure both about the hook, which looked like it might be bending out of shape just a bit on the landing strut above, and the girl, who didn't look like she was exactly the athletic type, holding on to his ankle.
He lifted his leg as high as he could, considering the swaying and shaking and the wind, and managed to grab hold of her with his free hand by her wrist, before tucking her under his arm where at least she'd be secure and not have to worry about falling too much. "Name's Lou," he shouted, "Nice to meet you!" He then hit the trigger on his grappling gun, which ought to have caused it to reel them in, up the vehicle above. What it did instead was give an agonized mechanical groan and then fell silent. "Oh, hell."
This was crazy- absolutely crazy. And Willow had seen some pretty crazy stuff before. Lou, as he introduced himself, manhandled her up so she wasn't dangling anymore and she gripped onto his shirt as tightly as she could.
"Willow!" she managed to shout and she closed her eyes against the wind. Oh, this was so not going to end well. What had she been thinking? This was bad. Very very Bad. With a capital B, Bad. "Is it supposed to make that noise?" she yelled, hoping Lou would be able to hear her. What the hell was going on?!
In the normal run of events, having an attractive young woman like this clinging to him for dear life might have been fairly exciting, but at the moment, he didn't really have time to think about that for more than a second or so. "Um!" He shouted, "Maybe?" He hit the trigger a few more times, without any more response than the first time. He then felt a disconcerting lurch as the hook, high above, slid another six inches closer to coming loose from its place on the helicopter's strut. Well. There didn't seem to be any very happy ending to this story.
He looked down. The ground was only about thirty feet below, and while he was sure he could survive a fall from quite a bit more than that height, it was starting to look pretty bad for this Willow chick, one way or the other. He sighed disgustedly. It would be back to the drawing board, he guessed, if he had bothered to actually draw anything out ahead of time with this machine. "Okay, new plan!" he shouted, "Hold on tight, and, uh... try to go loose otherwise?"
He let go of the machine about two seconds before the hook slipped loose, and started to fall. Lou did his best to cradle and shield her with his body before they hit the ground below...
"What do you mean, hold-" the word 'tight' was turned into a scream as Lou let go of the machine and they started falling towards the ground. Gripping Lou's shirt harder, she pulled herself together and tried to think. They didn't have very far to fall, but she knew she knew a spell that would help... There wasn't any time to say anything so she concentrated hard on a big bail of hay. There was a sharp jolt and she felt her head knock against Lou's chin. Ow. That was going to hurt later. Her muscles protested, but it hadn't been as bad as she thought it would be. She opened her eyes and saw yellow straw around her.
Lou felt the wind go out of him as he hit the ground, but it hadn't been nearly the impact that he'd thought it would be. Unfortunately, a second later, he suffered an additional blow as the hook, descending from the sky above him and the rapidly-receding helicopter, came crashing down on his head with a resounding clank. "Ow! For frigsakes!" He shouted, brushing it and the rest of the cable aside into the...hay?
He hadn't spotted it when he was up in the air, but he guessed he could have missed it. Maybe? He knew there were horses, and, more menacingly, unicorns around here. Maybe this is what they ate when they weren't trying to eat him.
He looked at the young woman laying on his chest, and couldn't help but realize, now that he could actually get a proper, not-running-and-jumping-for-dear-life look at her, that she was actually pretty cute. "Eh, um," he stammered, trying to un-derail his train of thought, "Sorry about all that, Are you okay?"
Thank god it had worked. And that they were both still alive. Lou apologized and Willow climbed off him, moving to drag the hook as far away as she could from him. It wasn't very far. Then she rounded on him, "Me- are you okay? You just got hit in the head with... that thing! And what were you thinking, jumping after the helicopter like that?! You could've been hurt! How do you not have a hook-shaped hole in your head?!"
It occurred to Willow that she'd shouted the majority of her tirade, and she took a deep breath. This was embarrassing. "Sorry," she said softly, kneeling down and checking his head again, "I shouldn't have shouted. Are you okay?"
"Well, I'm still trapped in some otherworldly castle, and my brilliant escape plan kinda blew up in my face, but..." But he had a redheaded angel leaning over him, expressing concern for him, is what. "I guess I've been worse," he finished.
"I get stuff like this all the time," he said, pointing at the hook and cable. It wasn't said with pride,m but with a certain amount of chagrin. He'd never chosen any of this, and he wasn't going to boast about it. "Honestly, I've had a lot worse. "I just hoped I might be able to get myself out of here and maybe spare you what I been going through, these past six months or so."
Now that the whirlwind of crazy helicopter hanging was over and she was sure Lou wasn't going to spontaneously succumb to what should normally have been fatal wounds, Willow had a chance to get things straight.
And nothing was making any sense. Best to start from square one- and that was Oz. "I'm looking for a friend of mine. His name is... uh, sorry, his name is Oz." God, it still hurt to say his name. She thought that part of it would be over already. But some days it just came back and... "He said he was in trouble and needed me. Do you know where I can find him?"
"Second star to the right and straight on until morning, I'm guessing," he said, not without sympathy. "I ain't met anyone by that name the whole time I been here. Mind you, there's a lot of new folks around, these past couple of weeks, so I guess it ain't impossible. Usually, though, whatever you get on that ticket that gets you on that chopper turns out to be nothing but a heap of lies." He frowned, not happy to be giving her bad news. "Sorry."
"No, no... no, that's not right." Willow sank down to sit on her heels. "Are you sure?" she asked. How could she have been so stupid. Of course it hadn't been a letter from Oz. But maybe Oz didn't want them to know his name. He was a cautious guy. "How about a werewolf," she asked, knowing it was a long shot, "Is there a werewolf here?"
"I think so," he said. "About... maybe three months ago? I guess I saw one. At least that's what I got told. I never saw it turn into anything other than a jumbo, giant-sized wolf, though. Calls himself Loke. Through, like, telepathy and stuff. Creepy stuff, let me tell you." He stopped for a moment, trying to put the pieces of her disconnected questions together and failing. "Why, was there something about a werewolf in that letter or something? Like, some kind of wolf man is after this Oz guy or something?"
Loke... if that was Oz she didn't know why he'd chosen the name Loke. But a werewolf was a werewolf and there probably weren't that many of them around. "My... friend, Oz, he's a werewolf. So, maybe that's him, right? Could be, right?" Hopefully she didn't look too needy...
Lou didn't think it was too likely, but didn't see any reason to disappoint her if he didn't need to. From what he'd seen, he wasn't sure that Loke wasn't just some big, dumb animal that someone had taught to talk using the limited power of his mind. He'd seen stranger things. "They got this, like, phone system here," he said, helpfully. "You probably got one in the helicopter. Assumin' it didn't break. I can show you how to use it, and ask around if anyone's seen this..." he was going to say 'dude', but the term didn't seem to fit the mental image she was painting of this Oz guy. "...friend,"
As if on cue, he heard, from a short-and-dwindling distance away, the sound of a buzzing electrical motor and flapping plastic wings, accompanied, today, by the digital music from the original Legend of Zelda's dungeons. "Speak of the friggin' devil and he shall appear to piss you off," he said, looking over at his flying phone-beast, Miss Piggy, as the VCR-sized robotic contraption finally caught up with him.
Willow fumbled in her pockets and then realized that she'd put the cell phone she'd been given into her bag. Which was who knows how far away from them. "My phone's with all my other stuff, over..." Willow did a circle and spotted the castle, "I'm guessing over there," she amended.
The theme song attracted her attention and she looked over to the flying thing coming towards them. "Is that going to attack us?" she asked, "Should we be running right now?"
"Only if you're worried about it attacking your childhood memories with its stupid crap," he said, swatting at it. It dodged him easily. It had gotten entirely too accustomed to his periodic acts of physical aggression and had seemingly developed all the subroutines it needed to keep itself intact. "I built this flying heap of crap a couple of months ago and now I can't get it to leave me alone or to..." he turned his head fully towards the device, shouting the final two words at it, "...SHUT. UP."
Willow extended her arms to the... thing. It was kind of a little cute. "What does it do?" she asked.
"Aside from the obvious," he asked rhetorically. "Plays video games, movies, stuff like that. Plus all the stuff that a normal cel phone and one of the castle's phones can do," he pointed out some of the components that made it up. "I built it out of a bunch of different stuff, and it still does most of what those machines did, plus a bunch of new stuff. Watch it, though, it's got a lazer beam thing, and it can be pretty unfriendly some..." he watched with bemusement as it fluttered down, coming to rest peaceably on her hands, seeming to regard her with interest and curiosity, "...times."
"Hey you," Willow cooed. "Lazer beams, huh? So I shouldn't drop it or make any sudden movements?"
It was a fascinating piece of technology. Willow could see all the components that Lou had mentioned. "I'm sure she comes in handy once in a while. Is it a she? Or he? And can she lead us back to my stuff?"
"I call it Miss Piggy," he said, covering his eyes with one hand as he laughed at the ridiculousness of it. "So I guess she can be a she if you want. Just as long as I don't got to see the male version, you know?"
He leaned down towards Miss Piggy, which observed him with one tiny camera eye as the others continued to study this newcomer. "What do you say, girl? Feel like earning all that electricity you keep sucking up today? Do me a solid and lead the pretty lady back to her phone?"
A moment later, it lifted off of her hands, whizzing about in the air a bit and then making a bee-line back in the direction they had come from. "Now we get to see if she's actually doing something right for a change or just going for a re-charge somewhere," he said, ruefully.
"Well then, lead the way Miss Piggy!" Willow added, smiling at Lou. Willow followed Miss Piggy, taking care to walk in step with Lou. She still didn't believe that he was completely fine after the ordeal they'd just been through.
"So, tell me more about this castle. What's so bad about it that you were willing to risk your life to get out?"
"More of a risk to my dignity than my life, really," he said, though he supposed he didn't exactly know if that was true or not. He had no idea what would happen if he hit the far end of the barrier while he was outside of that helicopter, and didn't really want to know. "Still."
"Let's see. The whole place is surrounded by some kind of magical forcefield. Seems like the folks in the choppers can get in and out just fine, but anyone else? Just pukes and then passes out if they try to get too far away. Nobody ever gets out on their own, and nobody knows who's even in charge here. Sometimes," his voice went cold, as some genuine fear crept in, "People just go missing in the middle of the night, and we never see them again. No idea what happens to them. There's monsters and evil holograms, an'... all sorts of craziness." He figured the unicorns and the time travel could wait until she'd caught up. "Some folks have been here years. I've been here maybe six months. I figure I long since got fired from my job, lost my apartment, an' had all my stuff sold by my landlord. So, you know. There's that."
It was a lot to take in. Willow glanced at Lou and as she looked him over she didn't see any reason as to why he would be lying. And it would explain why he'd tried to hitch a ride from the chopper. She looked around the grounds for any sign of the monsters or evil Lou was talking about but it looked like plain regular deserted castle grounds.
"No way out, huh?" she said, her heart sinking. Far from home, from her friends- what were they going to think? That some demon had come and killed her? They were going to worry... "Is there any way of sending a message out? Letting... people know that you're okay?"
And here she'd though Oz was coming back to her. Willow blinked away the burning in her eyes.
Oh, hell. He hadn't meant to upset her that much. He figured just giving it to her straight without too much drama would make it easier. Hell, he didn't even figure she'd believe all of this stuff at once, and it would take some time to sink in. He momentarily thought about offering her a hug, but put that out of his head quickly. Instead, awkwardly, he gave her what he hoped was a comforting pat on the shoulder. "Well, I've been workin' on that problem for a little bit. It don't seem like there's anyone else around here that's got it in them to actually build anything, so it's sort of down to me," hearing the words escape from his mouth actually depressed him quite a bit, now that he thought about it. "But so far, uh, no. Not really."
The pat on her shoulder was slightly reassuring and a bit awkward; nonetheless, Willow smiled at Lou. At least he was trying. And, she reasoned, there was still this werewolf, Loke, to look forward to. Even if it wasn't Oz (which she realized she was starting to think even though she didn't want to) maybe he knew something about Oz.
Yeah, she though, she just had to think about this positively. Just because she was stuck here didn't mean that the others couldn't find her. One way or another she'd be back home soon- they always worked things like this out.
"Is the castle over a hellmouth?" she asked, "Back home we're over one and... well, it sounds exactly like what you said. Except the whole forcefield thing."
"Hellmouth if I know," he said, shrugging. He had no idea what the word meant, but what the hellmouth, right? "Nobody seems to know what's going on. We've found a couple of different things that seem like they might be involved in all this, but it's all confusing. We don't even really know if it's magic or some kinda high-tech thing."
"Sometimes they're interconnected, magic and technology. So... what happens now? Do I just wait around until someone attacks me?" Fatigue was starting to catch up with her- between classes, helping Buffy with patrol and finding the ticket in her dorm room... there hadn't been much chance for a nap. "Where do I sleep? I just accept that I can't do anything? Isn't there something I can try? Not that I don't think you guys haven't tired your best..." Hopefully he wouldn't be offended by that. But she owed it to herself to at least try.
"Well, where you can sleep, you've got a couple of options there," he said, "An' I can show you some of the better ones and some of the worse ones, so you know what you're getting into here. I gotta say, you're havin' an easier time with all of this than I'd be if I were in your shoes. If my life hadn't been a roller-coaster of crazy the last couple of years, I don't think I'd be buyin' any of this stuff myself."
Willow smiled ruefully, "Something like this... things happen all the time in Sunnydale, demons and magic and the like. My friends will realize that I'm gone and they'll find a way to get me back. I know they will. A couple years ago I would be freaking out, but I'm either going to wake up, or my friends will come get me."
Buffy, Xander, Giles- Willow knew that they'd do whatever it took to get her out of here. They were always there for her and they'd come through for her this time as well. One hundred percent certain.
"I guess I hope you're right," he said, a bit skeptically. Unless her friends weree a lot more resourcefull than the friends of anyone else trapped here, it didn't seem very likely to him. "If they do, I hope they bring along a ride big enough for all of us."
He pointed to where Miss Piggy was buzzing around above the ground a hundred meters or so ahead, above the pile of Willow's belongings. "Looks like the little bug did good for a change."
"Thank you Miss Piggy!" she called to the mechanical contraption. Now if she could only remember where she'd put that phone...
She couldn't help but think that Lou clearly didn't have as much faith in her Scooby gang as she did, but that was understandable. He didn't know them, but she wouldn't let him shake her belief in them.
And she knew why she wasn't freaking out about all this but most people she knew would make up any kind of excuse. What was it he'd said? Roller-coaster crazy life? "I don't mean to pry, but, what did you mean when you said you'd been through some crazy stuff?"
"Well, I wasn't always this way, an' it wasn't by choice, lemmie tell you”, he said, tapping his chest with his hands. “One day, I guess, mysterious powers from beyond this world just picked me to be the big hero..." This was true only in the broadest sense. The mysterious forces were a pair of alien college students named Zinnack and Yoof, and they had chosen him entirely by accident. But he'd told the story so many times over the years that sometimes he liked to spice it up a bit just to keep it interesting for himself. For a couple of months, he'd taken to telling people he got so muscular as a psychosomatic reaction to playing so many football video games in high school. "Then, bam, one day I just wake up like this. Super-strong, super-tough, fast-healing, weird ESP powers and stuff. Ever since then, I been fightin' demons and aliens and ghosts and draculas all the time."
"Friggin' pain in the ass, is what it is.” He stooped down, picking up Willow’s bag nad handed it to her. “All I ever wanted was to be this ordinary teenaged dude, relaxing, goin' to parties and getting high once in a while. Instead, I had to be this friggin' 'chosen one', and my life's been nothin' but hassles ever since." He shrugged, dismissively. "But what am I gonna do, right? Try to be grateful or whatever? That's what a lot of people tell me. I guess not a lot of folks can relate to problems like that, but I'll tell you, most folks? I'd trade my problems for theirs in a minute."
Willow wasn't going to mention his... unique stature, but from the sounds of it he wanted someone to talk to about it. Mysterious powers, fighting demons and ghosts, the power- sounded like someone Willow knew. A best-friend sort of someone.
Willow accepted the bag and started looking through it and then stopped. She had to say something. "I know someone like you. Didn't ask for it but all of a sudden she got the whole world dumped on her shoulders. Got this power and then all of a sudden she's expected just to give up her own life and, oh, there goes any chance of being a normal teenager! Her power's less conspicuous, but... it's not fair. It's not fair at all, but... she tries. She still goes to parties, and she hangs out with friends- like me, and don't read into that, but she does have friends. You don't have to be grateful for it- it absolutely stinks. But you don't have to let it take over your life. You can work with it, it doesn't have to be all bad."
Hopefully that wasn't as cheesy as she imagined it was.
"Sounds like she got lucky, then," he said. "The only people who'll hang out with me anymore are the super-powered oddballs that actually like all of this stuff. Everyone else's been scared off a long time ago." He shrugged, thinking about the friends he used to have, and how much he used to be like them. Peas in a pod. "Can't say I blame 'em. I'd have probably done the same after, like, the eighth alien invasion that just HAPPENED to be within walking distance of my house." That was an exaggeration, he knew. There had only been five events that could really be called 'invasions' in the past few years, but the point stood. "I guess if anything, I should be kinda grateful that things are a bit quieter here. Monsters and holograms and stuff notwithstanding."
He pointed towards the village, off in the far distance. The broken remains of the crashed helicopter, and the workshop he'd been building around it could be faintly seen there. "Speakin' of which. You were asking where you could sleep. There's a village over there. Bunch of abandoned houses. Like a ghost town. I don't recommend it. You're pretty alone out there, if you get into trouble, an' there's pretty serious monster action over there."
He pointed at the castle. "Castle's a bit better, but it means you're never more than a few feet down the hall from a lot of freaks and weridos that can be dangerous in their own ways. Draculas and stuff. I don't go in there much."
He then gestured, more generally, across the lake. "There's a bunch of little houses and cabins scattered around over there. They're pretty swank, and I claimed on of them for myself. All abandoned, too. But again, it's kinda out in the open."
"An' then there's the hotel. That's pretty much your safest bet, even if it means you don't exactly got a place of your own."
"Just so you know, I don't mind super-powered oddballs. Had previous experience with them, you could say, and I don't mind them so much." Was it so bad to be wishing Buffy was here with her?
Willow looked in each direction that Lou pointed in. Abandoned ghost towns weren't her idea of good lodgings. "Freaks and weirdos, huh?" she asked, wondering what kind of people lived here. And being alone right now wasn't something that was high on Willow's list of priorities. "Which way's the hotel then?" she asked. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to get completely settled anyway. No telling how long she would actually be here.
"That's kind of a complicated question. Come with me, an' I'll try an' explain when we get where we're goin'." He gestured towards the castle. "That place is sort of our first stop on the way," he explained.
As he started walking, he asked her "If I'm not intrudin' or nothin', what kind of experience do you got with the super-powered crowd?"
Willow hesitated before answering. Talking about Buffy without saying her name was one thing, but the whole slaying thing was really supposed to be a secret. Not that they were that good at keeping it a secret but... Then again, she was in the middle of nowhere.
"That person I told you about? My best friend, Buffy, she's a Slayer. Giles says," What was it that he always used to say? "That every generation gets a slayer. A chosen one with the strength and skill to fight vampires and evil and demons. Except she never chose to be that one. Just another high school student who has this extraordinary power. And my b- uh, friend, Oz, he's a werewolf. So you know, that makes things complicated on full moons. I've learnt a little bit of magic, and there's this ex-demon who keeps hanging around my best friend Xander... We're a pretty oddball little group. The Scooby gang. They're the one's who'll come and save me..."
Lou listened to her ramble, nodding as he went. He had nothing against a good ramble; he was guilty of it himself from time to time, and it was an interesting story. "Sounds like you guys got saddled with a lot of the same type of crap I did. I got a bunch of... friends, I guess?" He was still reluctant to use the term to describe the "team" that had forced themselves upon him, but after a couple of years, he couldn't keep pretending he felt nothing for them but the irritation he did at their first half-dozen encounters. "They got a bunch of powers and problems a lot like mine. Not as impressive, though, 'cause I guess I got picked to be the big leader. Like I had any choice in the matter." He shook his head.
"Buffy, though, huh? Some parents, right? The names they saddle their kids with. Oughta be a law, I say."
"I always wondered if we were the only ones who were dealing with all the demons and vampires and near-apocalypses. It's kind of, comforting to know that we weren't the only group who have to deal with all the dooms day stuff. Not that I'm happy you had to go through that stuff too, but... It's nice to know we weren't alone." That wasn't too terrible a thought, was it?
"I like the name Buffy," she said, impartially, hiding a smile. "It's helpful sometimes- you wouldn't expect a blonde girl named Buffy to be as powerful as she is."
"I guess that makes sense. You know, my guys wanted me to put on a costume and call myself 'Mister Terrific'? God, what a bunch of nerds they can be sometimes." He chuckled a bit, thinking of the ways this 'Buffy' girl's situation mirrored his own and what he'd do in her shoes. "I guess it got a lot easier to deal with all the people who gave her a hard time about her name once she could chuck 'em across a room or whatever, huh?"
"But yeah, I kinda wondered about that sort of thing, too. When there'd be some crashed alien spaceship that was gonna blow wide open if I wasn't there to keep it from blowin' up the world or somethin'. What happens when it lands somewhere else an' I never hear about it, right? I mean, I guess that one of the powers I got also made all the crazy stuff come straight to me from wherever they were, so it was maybe less of a problem, but still." He figured he'd get into the whole 'we're all from different worlds and universes' thing later, too. One thing at a time.
"Oh, were they lobbying to become a unitard group? I can't imagine you in a unitard," Willow giggled. She couldn't help it- the image was too amusing. "Thankfully we never dressed up in costumes. Well, other than during Halloween, but you're supposed to dress up then. You're not supposed to turn into whatever your costume is because of a spell, but that was only one year...." Willow frowned, thinking about all her Halloween nights. The last couple hadn't turned out so well.
"Anyway, I think we got a lot of them because of the Hellmouth, the thing I was talking about earlier. That and I think vampires and demons are attracted to Buffy. Just how dangerous are the monsters here?"
"Well, I seen one of them tear through solid steel, run about a hundred miles an hour, an' heal from a broken neck in just a couple of minutes, so... pretty bad," he said, seriously, rubbing his neck at the memory. "I had a tough time putting that one down. I only seen one of them once, but I hear they're all over the place, so maybe I just got lucky." He guessed being coy about it for too long wasn't really in her best interests, so he may as well just spit it out. "They look like unicorns, if you can believe that. I dunno if they really are, or if they just look that way. I don't got a lot of experience with them, you know. Guess it serves me right for not goin' to see them at the zoo when I was a kid," he joked.
The unicorns sounded pretty monstrous to her and she looked around them just to make sure there wasn't one heading at them. "And if one of them decides, Hey, I'd sure like a redheaded girl right now- what do I do?" She pulled out the cellphone, "Call someone on this and hope they have Sonic-like speed?"
"I'm pretty quick. Good strong legs and all that. An' I've told people if it's a life or death thing they should give me a call, but, you know... it ain't like I can make any promises or anything like that. I can maybe outrun a car on a street, but one of those things puts me to shame. If you want," he offered, a bit awkwardly, "We could hang out for a couple of days, until you've got the hang of this place. You know. If you want."
It was a kind proposition and the place was still very unfamiliar. And thus far it had proven to be quite an adrenaline-inducing environment. "It would be nice to have someone to show me around," she agreed. And it was always nice to make a new friend. "Plus, I don't think Miss Piggy would have any objections to that either."
"Yeah, really," he said, grinning. The flying device was buzzing around her head excitedly, and began to play some music from Super Mario Bros 2 in excitement. "That reminds me, I should show you how the phones work around here," he said.
Willow flipped open the phone. She'd only seen a couple cell phones before and this one seemed impossibly small. There was a green button and a red button and she already guessed what those did, "Call and disconnect?" she asked, showing Lou the buttons she was talking about.
"It's weird. They're not even really phones. They're more like... you know about bulletin board systems?" Despite his vast repository of alien high-tech know-how, he remained a creature of the 1990s, and the Internet was mostly after his time. "You can't talk in real time. You just leave messages for each other. Voice or text, whatever you want. Here, lemmie show you..."
He gestured for Miss Piggy to come over to him, and for a wonder, she did. He then called up the recent conversation he'd had with Damon on the system and replayed it for her, nudging the buttons on Miss Piggy's belly which constituted the remains of the phone's controls. When he was done, he was laughing again at the way the exchange had gone.
"Oh, I see. And so anyone can answer a message I send out?"
And then she realized what their conversation was about. "There's actually the Wicked Witch of the West here?" she asked skeptically.
"Like I said to Damon Dillweed there, it's probably just some kook in a costume or somethin'. I mean, hell, maybe it is a real witch, an' she's just pullin' peoples' legs with the Wizard of Oz bit, you know?" He shrugged. Whoever she was, he hadn't met her, and didn't know. "That Damon guy seems like the type that makes it pretty easy to pull his leg. Probably whoever she was was just screwin' with him."
He tapped the phone panel on Miss Piggy's belly and went on, "You can do what that guy was doing an' leave a message for everyone all at once and just see who responds, or, if you've got their private number, you can call them personally. It ain't totally reliable, though. Some people get their phones lost or stolen or broken or whatever, or else just don't carry them around. So, you know, it's anyone's guess if your message'll actually get to whoever you're leavin' it for."
"Reassuring," Willow muttered. "And how do I figure out my own private number? Should I send out a, hey everyone, my name's Willow, please don't kill me? message? Or do people generally not do that?" She looked up at Lou (he was really tall, looking up meant really looking up). He didn't seem to mind her pestering him with questions and she gave him a smile for his troubles.
He smiled back; he couldn't help it. There was just something so... rosy about her grin. In fact, he found himself blushing just a bit, and quickly looked away, turning his attention towards Miss Piggy. "Got that covered," he said, covering for himself. "Just, uh, here. Give me a private call at this number..." he read out his own number to her, "And I can tell you what yours is when I get it."
"Okay, let's see if this works..." Following the steps Lou had shown her she punched in the number and left a message.
There was a small, electronic chirp from somewhere inside of Miss Piggy's electronic guts, and Lou quickly called up Willow's message, which he then played back to her. "Simple as that," he said. "An' here's your number for you," at which he rattled it off for her. As he was closing it down, he noticed something he'd missed earlier. Scrolling back a couple of messages, he called Willow over to have a look at something.
"Lookit this. Seems like some guy's holdin' a pool party in a couple of days. Seems like if your buddy Oz is there, or anyone who knows him, that'd be a good place to ask around."
Willow read the message... from beside Lou. She would do over the shoulder if she could but... that would never work.
Lou was right- if there were going to be a lot of people there, one of them might know about Oz. "A pool party could be fun! But... it's indoors, right? It's a little chilly out here for a pool party..."
"Says it's inside the hotel, which is where we're headin' anyway, so I can show you. I only been there once, but it's indoors an' heated, so, you know, it should be fine." He figured that a lot of the message was probably pretty confusing to her, but with the two of them heading for the time room right now, a certain amount of it was about to be cleared up one way or the other.
"Good, just making sure. And... the part where it says 'hundred centuries in the future'... that's some kind of slang or something, right?"
"Um, sort of," he said. "Here, uh, follow me for a second, I think I see something up ahead that might, well... maybe not make anything make more sense, but maybe make it clearer."
He jogged a short distance off to the left, where he saw an irregular disturbance in the blanket of snow just a short way out of their way. He was pretty sure he knew what it was. Digging his way down under the frosty surface with his hands, he soon stood up, brushing the loose snow off of a dimetrodon's skull. One of the ones left over from the dinosaur invasion this past summer. "When I first got here, these critters were scamperin' all over the place. Dinosaurs and pterodactyls and all sorts of prehistoric stuff. All dead now." He levered the jaw opened and closed like a puppet a few times, saying "Rarr, rarr, rarr," as he did so.
"Time is pretty weird around here." He handed the skull to Willow for her inspection.
Lou playing with a dinosaur head wasn't exactly comic but it did ease a bit of the tension she was starting to feel in her shoulders. "So that belonged to a dinosaur that was living and killed... here? That's... I can deal with that. I think..."
Finally Willow accepted the skull. It looked real, like the ones at the museum. So real it was unreal. "This can't be right," she muttered. Her eyes went to Lou and she waited for him to tell her he had been joking.
"You want, you can dig out the rest of the skeleton there," he said, pointing at the heap he'd dug it out of. "You'll see the damn things all over the place. Friggin' mess. And uh," he said, not really wanting to correct her or come off as too much of a nerd. He wasn't. He just watched a lot of Discovery Channel, and happened to remember this fact from some special he'd seen on the topic, "That's a dimetrodon. Not actually a dinosaur. Actually more like a really early mammal. Could have been kinda aunt or uncle to us, I guess?"
He gestured for her to follow as he began back to the castle again. "Pretty much the second I got off my chopper, I had one of them tryin' to eat my head. A little while later, they were all skeletons like this. Time travel crap like this. Friggin' pain in the ass."
Willow left the dinosaur - the dimetrodon - head in the snow and followed Lou. "The second I got off the chopper I was back on it dangling from the leg of this guy with a grappling hook. And then he told me all this stuff about how I was trapped here and couldn't leave and he showed me a dinosaur head.... But I think you have me beat with that one," she admitted, nudging Lou's arm lightly to show that she was joking.
"Why are we heading to the castle? Shortcut to the hotel?" she asked, finally noticing there wasn't what she would guess was a hotel near by.
"Yeah, basically," he said. "The other way to get to the hotel takes a couple of hundred centuries. This way's lots faster." He walked up to the castle's wooden door and pushed it open for her, glad to get in out of the snow himself. He stamped his feet on the doormat before heading in before her.
The castle looked just as much a castle on the inside as it had on the outside. There was a sheet of paper in the lobby and Willow picked it up. It looked crumpled and bits of the edges were missing. It was basically the same information that Lou had already told her. Sticking it back on the ground for lack of a better place to put it she hurried to catch up with Lou.
"So it looks like everyone here is resigned to staying here aren't they..." it was a little depressing.
"All the losers are, maybe," he said, grinning. "You saw that workshop over in that village? I'm seein' if I can rebuild a helicopter that crashed here a couple of months back. Hell, one time I even built this grappling hook gun thing an' tried to snag one of them whirly-birds in mid-air. You should have been there," he said, nudging her back.
"Yeah," Willow laughed, "I heard that went real well. Hey Lou, I thought you said to stay away from the castle? Lots of crazies and all that stuff?"
"Yeah, just don't make eye contact. We'll be out of here in a minute," he said, hustling along. "It's just up this way." He made his way to the wide wooden double doors of the time room and bumped them open, revealing an octoganal art gallery with one painting hanging on one of each of four walls. "Okay, believe it or not, this is where all the dinosaurs came from, as near as anyone can tell. This is where things start to get a little weird."
"Start to get a little weird?" Willow asked dubiously. "Wonder how they fit through the door..."
The room was huge, and with the red walls and grand floor... it looked pretty snazzy. "This place is pretty impressive," she admitted, going over to a painting with a tree and flowers and some guy who was trying to crawl away from.... the planet. "These paintings are nice. I like them."
"Way I hear it, they just knocked them down. Then a week or two later, the doors were back up again, easy as you please, like they'd been there for a hundred years. I gave up on tryin' to figure that part out a long time ago." In fact, he had given up trying to figure it out about five seconds after he gave it his first moment's consideration. He really hated time travel stuff. "The bigger deal is how they got into this room in the first place." He walked over to the painting corresponding with the golden age, and gestured for her to follow. "Uh, here, come over here and hold on tight to me," he said. He actually didn't know if physical contact was necessary to travel through together; he'd never gone through one of these things with someone else before. For the moment, though, he was willing to assume.
Willow wandered over to the painting Lou was standing in front of. Hold on tight... did that mean... what was going to happen? But, she felt like she could trust Lou. And they already got the awkward first touches out of the way when she was holding onto him for dear life as they swung from the helicopter. Willow decided to go for it.
"Just, hold on tight like... this? Is this okay?" she asked, taking Lou's hand and putting her other hand on his arm. "Why, what are you going to do?"
"Something weird," he said, gripping her hand in his. He poked the button under the painting, and the world dissolved all around the two of them, replacing itself momentarily with a curved wall of paintings at the end of an olympic-sized swimming pool in a posh and futuristic hotel. "Like I said. Shortcut."
The world seemed to melt away and was replaced with... Willow blinked. "What?" she asked, "But how did... This isn't normal, is it? How did that happen? Magic? Had to be magic right, because, non-magic things don't do this, do they..."
Gently Willow pulled her arm away from Lou and moved to the edge of the pool. Dipping her arm in she pulled it away wet- nope, not an illusion. Oh, it would make so much more sense if this was an illusion. "So, this is the hotel then?"
"Yep. Hotel Fortunada," he said, shrugging. "Don't ask me how it works. Time travel stuff is mostly way over my head. And I say this as a guy that once actually built a workin' time machine. So, you know," he rolled his eyes, frowning helplessly. "But we're standing right where we were a second ago, just some time way off in the future, after the whole castle's been knocked down and replaced with some giant pleasure resort."
"Giant pleasure resort- that's lucky. And I'm supposed to stay here? How reliable is this... time travel thing?"
"Pretty much one hundred per cent," he said. "Seems like it screwed up around the time that all the dinosaurs and stuff came through, but that's the only time I ever heard of the system goin' down. It's weird, too. You spend an hour here, and then go back, you won't arrive at the same time you left. You'll be back an hour later, too. It's almost like it's just four different places you're gettin' teleported to. Except, I guess, some people did some experiments with changing the future, and it worked and stuff, so, ehh," he grunted. "You can stay here if you want to. It's safer and nicer than the other places, but I can show you those, too, if you want. Seems like someone's already payin' all the bills for us here, so don't worry about payin' your tab with future-dollars or whatever. Or, uh... future euros? I dunno."
"Can I decide after I see some more of this place? It... doesn't look too bad. It just seems..." She glanced at the painting. "Like it shouldn't work. Like any second it's going to stop working and that'll be that. I'll be trapped here and my friends won't ever be able to find me. I can check out the room before I take it, right?"
"I think it's pretty much yours one way or the other, actually," he said, leading the way to the door. "I got a room here I never pay for and only sleep in maybe one day out of four, as well as the place I got back outside of the castle there. Seems like they got a room set up for everyone."
The hotel itself looked incredibly upscale and... expensive. "Does anyone else stay here?" she asked, wondering what kind of company there would be. The dazzle of it was slowly winning her over, despite the rather unconventional method of entrance.
"Some people. Seems like not many. I asked about it, one time, and apparently we're on kind of an off-season right now. Sometimes you'll still see tourists and stuff, though. Sometimes some of them are even aliens. Saw these giant bug things once. Gave me the creeps." He was walking and talking, heading up to the main counter in the middle of the hotel's first floor. "Aside from that, I've only seen like one or two other guys from the castle. I dunno why. If I didn't have my whole escape plan goin', I'd probably spend a lot of my time here. I don't know what anyone else's excuse is."
"It is a nice place," Willow agreed. There was a lady at the counter Lou walked her towards, who smiled at them. She looked pleasant enough and Willow instigated the conversation, "Hi."
"Hello," the lady responded, very politely. "You must be Willow Rosenberg. Are you here to check in to your room?"
Willow smiled at the lady and turned, half facing away, to Lou. She was trying to be discreet, but that usually didn't work for her. "How does she know my name," Willow hissed, "I just got here!"
"You haven't heard? You're a giant superstar in the future. There's statues of you everywhere." Lou smirked, not especially seriously.
Willow's eyes went wide and she momentarily believed him. "But how am I still alive in the future? I've never been here before... unless... I'm not, am I?"
"Nah, just messing with you," he said, playfully, laughing. "I think they know who everyone is. Like the tickets and the phones. It's probably all one big deal."
That was a better explanation. If she really was a superstar she might have to disappear and go back to the castle. "That's a relief. Don't do that!" she chastised lightly. "But next time, I won't be so gullible!"
Turning back to the lady, who either hadn't heard (unlikely) or just pretended she hadn't (more likely), Willow said, "I guess I am here to check out my room. It's not far away, is it?"
"You'll be staying in the Gamma section of our hotel, Mrs. Rosenberg. Here is your room number and access key. Do you need some assistance with your luggage or perhaps a tour around our facility?"
"Thank you," Willow said, taking the keycard. Then she looked up at Lou, "Do we need help?" she asked him.
Lou's desire not to do any hard work that could be avoided warred internally with his desire to impress the girl. In the end, after a moment or two of indecision, the latter won out. "Nah, I can get your bags for you if you want. It's no problem," He held out his hands to her.
"Looks like we'll be fine for now," Willow told the lady at the counter with a smile. She handed over her bags to Lou and smiled at him gratefully. "And we're heading to Guest Room five, second floor Gamma...." she trailed off, looking at Lou expectantly.
"No problem. That's just a couple doors down from my room," he said, tossing her bags casually over his shoulder. "This whole place, all this friggin' Greek alphabet stuff. Whatever, right? They don't even use English writing anymore, except where they put it up special for us, but somehow they still use alpha, beta, gamma and stuff? Please." He rolled his eyes. "Come on, there's an elevator just over there," he said, pointing at the corner of the building.
"We're still using Greek letters in our time, thousands of years after they first started using them. It's been around for such a long time... sort of timeless, don't you think?" she asked, pressing the button to call the elevator.
"Is it just me or is this building kind of... triangle-y?"
"I guess. Or, like," he groped for the word he was looking for and failed. "Sexangley? 'Cause it's kind of flattened on the corners, so there's like six sides, and three of them are just really small? Does that make sense?"
Willow thought about it for a moment and then giggled. "Not really," she admitted, "But then again I'm starting to think that things aren't meant to make sense."
She climbed into the elevator, unable to keep from touching the shiny edges. "You were right- it is nice here. Even the elevators are nice."
"Yeah. If it weren't for the bug people, the lonliness, the escape plan, and the fact that if I stay here long enough, I'm pretty sure it'll get blown up by some alien invasion or something, I'd probably stay here all the time. The rest of the city ain't bad either, if you don't mind everything being kind of... Star-Trekky, you know?"
"Oh, oh, like... Star-Trekky stuff?" she finished rather lamely. "I do like those cool gadgets they show in movies that are in the future, they're not so bad. And... maybe we can convince other people to come live here too."
Make that two things she was worried about here- the time travel required and the lack of other 'guests'.
"I say if they're happy being miserable and uncomfortable an' gettin' attacked by unicorns and stuff, let 'em," he said, as the elevator made its quick ascent to the second floor and then opened up with a soft chime. "People are weird that way. I don't waste my time tryin' to change them. Let 'em do their own thing, right?"
"I suppose they won't like doing anything other than that," Willow conceded, leaving the elevator and standing there, trying not to look like she was waiting for Lou to lead the way. "Are there signs anywhere?"
"If you wanna call them that," he replied, sarcastically, pointing at a wall-mounted plackard written in an incomprehensible jumble of alien letters. He could sometimes - not always, but sometimes - make out things written in alien languages, like Chinese, or French. These ones he had some real trouble with. "All the room doors have signs written in english, though. Come on, it's this way," he said, gesturing.