(Untitled)

[gone_byebye]

It will be a positive relief to go back to Chicago and deal with the nightly near-hurricanes brought by the Robert Mackenzie's repeating manifestation. Right now Ray's about had it up to here with astonishingly perfect women. He's sort of hoping that Mary Poppins will walk through the door with a claymore slung across her back and 'There can be

Comments

[shadowsfound]

Kevin's reading the sign.
"...huh. Can't help you there yet. I've only been here a week. Met a few good people, but none of 'em are that sort of wonderful.
Well, you could talk my ear off. So long as I have one left."

[gone_byebye]

"Oh, that's fine," Ray says. "I'm mostly trying to bring in victims of an entity that I believe may be a type of psychic vampire, possibly one with an eye to insinuating herself into multiple universes. Romana's perfectly normal for her species- that's my fiancee. My name's Ray Stantz. Hi."

[shadowsfound]

"Hi. Kevin Ford; nice to meetcha, Ray." He considers. "Trying to bait her, or figure out where she's hiding?"
Psychic vampires are trouble but on a threat scale for Earth 616? Not as terrifying as some entities.

[gone_byebye]

"More the latter than the former," Ray says. "Given her capacity for inserting herself retroactively into people's memories, and the amount of incredibly awful rewriting she's been doing of people's life's stories, I'm inclined to suspect she's attempting to establish footholds in multiple universes for some pretty nasty purposes. I'd like as much data as we can pull together before anybody tries to lure her out and make a strike."

[shadowsfound]

"Yeah. The kind of ability you're describing isn't uncommon where I'm from, though not often that powerful. But then, I'd wonder if it was altogether under her control," Kevin says after a minute. "If I'm not misunderstanding you, she's appearing to people as someone different every time--which sounds a lousy strategy in a single place or group.

They're going to talk to each other, after all.
Not that that excuses her, mind. Just sayin' it sounds like almost as big a possible weakness as a threat, if she can't pick out what she 'appears as'. " He shakes his head. "Or I'm makin' one too many assumptions. Lord knows it wouldn't be the first time."

[gone_byebye]

"She's presenting herself with a different name to each individual," Ray says. "So far we've got Regina Witherspoon, Roxanne of no known last name, Opal Winston, Serenity Sparklypoo, I don't remember what Captain Ryan said the manifestation that claimed to be his wife was, and Jerrica Wells. If she's not doing it on purpose, she's taking more advantage of her own condition than that jerk who was supposed to be the main character of Memento."

[shadowsfound]

Kevin tries not to laugh at the names. "Haven't seen it but...eesh," grimacing. "Is this place always so--" there are a number of words that come to mind. Most aren't polite, to say the least. "Insane?"

[gone_byebye]

"Not always, no," says Ray. "It comes and it goes. There's occasionally stretches of something almost like normalcy, but I'm probably not the best person to talk to about normal, given what life is like back home."

[shadowsfound]

"Me neither. I'm from what Bar tells me is called 'Earth 616'? though I never heard of that name for it before comin' here."

"Coffee cures most ills though," and on that note he thinks he should quit bugging the man. Ray's obviously got his hands full.

[gone_byebye]

"Oh! The X-men worldline. Yeah, I've heard of that one," says Ray. "Man, you guys have a heavier weirdness quotient than we do most of the time, and given that we had a hundred foot tall marshmallow man try to destroy New York a few years ago, that's saying something."

[shadowsfound]

"A..." imagine Kevin having "holy shit you're not serious, yes you are" for an expression.

"Yeah. I'm not an X-Man; I was a student with them for awhiles. Are any of them here? Haven't seen 'em."

[gone_byebye]

"I could get you a newspaper from the day after Mr. Stay-Puft, if you wanted," Ray offers.

"Well, there used to be more of them, but I haven't seen some of them in a while. Rachel Grey was on Security for ages. Hank McCoy was here, too, for a long time- I think he got married, so I don't know if he's the version from your timeline or not. Cyclops and Jean Grey were here for a while, too. Shadowcat's been here for a long while, I remember meeting her when she walked through me by mistake while both of us were reading."

[shadowsfound]

"Please, yes. Not that I don't believe you, but that must've been a hell of a day--and story."

"H'm. Our McCoy's never been married that I know of, unless it's after my time, 2006. That does sound like Shadowcat," he agrees with a chuckle.

[gone_byebye]

"They wound up making a movie about it," Ray says. "Not in my timeline, but in a couple of others where analogues of myself and my colleagues have existed. I was there for the premiere in one of them. It's not bad, although they didn't get everything right, but movies never do. Hang on-"

He gets up and heads over to the Bar, then returns with the Daily News for October 6, 2003. In his universe, that's the correct date.

"Nah, this was earlier than that by his timeline, so he must've been a variant Hank," Ray says. "Is yours blue and furry, or is he still the big-hands-big-feet but otherwise human-looking version? The one who got married was blue and furry. And wore glasses."

[shadowsfound]

"Blue," Kevin confirmed. "A few of the much younger students used to joke about him bein' the Cookie Monster." He takes the newspaper, looking at it.

"..."

"I probably shouldn't ask 'why marshmallows', should I."

[gone_byebye]

"We had a Sumerian god of destruction announcing that it would take the form of whatever one of us thought of next," Ray says, "and I couldn't empty my thoughts completely, so I tried to think of something harmless."

He says it pretty evenly for a guy turning that color of red.