Seven with One Blow (mixed_muses game)

[incognitoracer]

Rex didn't expect the door to his apartment to lead to the bar-but he didn't want to go home anyway.

Home was a panoramic view of the sunnydowns track, Home was a list of memos that needed to be processed and phonecalls that needed to be returned. Home was Minx

Comments

[acts_of_gord]

There's one. Over towards the fireplace, his back firmly and deliberately to the wall, his field of view covering a good three quarters of the main room. Gordon's only barely touched his beer. He's watching the room and sitting still.

He is very good at sitting still.

[incognitoracer]

Rex is a secret agent, but even they have their off days.

He's almost past him before he realizes who it is sitting there and staring like-well-

He checks his footsteps, "...Dr. Freeman?"

[acts_of_gord]

Gordon glances up, then nods fractionally. "Racer," he acknowledges. "Didn't think I'd be seeing you again."

[incognitoracer]

Racer X (who is secretly Speed's older brother who ran away from home) stares.

his brow furrows, "...Have I been gone that long?" He was in Milan yesterday (or was it the day before?) wasn't that long...

"Are you functional?"

[acts_of_gord]

"No," says Gordon. "No, you haven't. It was more a matter of things on my side of the door."

"Functional's about the kindest way to put it."

[incognitoracer]

Rex grabs for a chair, startling a waitrat. He sits-uninvited-before fixing Gordon with the same sort of look he uses when on the Track.

The unspoken word here is Talk Gordon.

[acts_of_gord]

Gordon picks up his beer. Doesn't bother drinking it, doesn't even bring it close to his face- just picks it up.

"Do you know what a resonance cascade is, racer?" he says. "It's a dimensional incident that makes the tears and gaps and anomalies in space on Star Trek look like the Trolley's door to the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. It's when energy pumped into exactly the right crystalline sample sets up such a quantum harmonic in the phase arrays being generated that dimensional reality itself rips open and exposes the world as we know it to something else entirely. It's when things get in."

[incognitoracer]

Rex is mentally shaking his head because he doesn't catch most of that. He understands dimensions (There was a nasty incident where people were experimenting with dimensions made purely of things like speed but we won't go into that)

It's only clear that this guy's seen something he shouldn't have seen. Civilians.

There's an edge to his words that Racer X mislikes.

".....Things like what?"

[acts_of_gord]

( "You'll have to flood the core anyway to get into the teleportation labs," the Lambda Team scientist said. "You're not authorized to know about those, but I can see you already know a great deal more than any one man is supposed to-" )

"Monsters," says Gordon. "Aliens. The kind of thing that makes the U. S. government decide that an order like 'eradicate all the witnesses' is a sensible one."

[incognitoracer]

"...."

You're in a bar at the end of the universe Rex, try and be a little more openminded.

Those sorts of orders are essential. If people knew how angry do you think they'd be Racer? Their races are fixed, there's no sport, no skill, no nothing except business.

He may not sound as sympathetic as he could when he says, "...You survived?"

It's probably not clear if he's talking about the executive termination order or the alien invasion.

[acts_of_gord]

There's a movement to one corner of Gordon's mouth that, on someone else, might be the start of a smile.

(One hand dips momentarily out of sight below the table. He's not reaching for anything, exactly. It's not reaching for something if you're just resting your fingertips on it a moment to reassure yourself that it's still there.)

Then he nods.

[incognitoracer]

This is...disconcerting.

On the one hand he is sorry because this man is a civilian of the highest order and on the other hand...

Rex sees something in the face that reminds him of himself.

Odd. I can't really be...no. no...

He smiles for him, the mocking smirk of a professional speaking with another professional, "...How'd it feel?"

The ass kicking and the taking names.

[acts_of_gord]

( There'd been... things... moving in the containment vessels that'd previously housed miniature suns. Flinging themselves against the glass, screeching like nothing Gordon'd ever heard before or ever wanted to hear again, and then one of them had dropped out of the green lightning and leapt for his face- )

( there'd been lasers ripping through the hallway, through the computer banks, through the corpse of Tom Kirkendall, the security guard- )

( there'd been metal under his desperate hands, a way out of that hell-hole, and then the unspeakable gorbling noise of something that had previously been a scientist- )

Gordon shakes his head once. Just once, a quick little snap like something danced across the skin over his spine. Come up to present time, Freeman. He looks at the other man and says, "To tell you the truth, it didn't feel like anything. Not until I was so far in it that I couldn't remember how long I'd been in it."

[incognitoracer]

Rex fixes him with a serious look. That distant gaze, that blank expression-

Shell shock? PTSD?

"...Becoming numb to it?"

He's no fucking shrink.

[acts_of_gord]

"Not exactly," says Gordon.

( "Gordon! Man, am I glad to see you! What the hell are these things? And why are they wearin' science team uniforms?" )

"There was no time. You can't stop to think about what you just felt when you're trying to survive."

[incognitoracer]

Rex nods slowly, "The mission takes priority."

He hesitates, "...I don't hear that come from alot of people."