B-Squad Common Room, SPD HQ [Evening, 11/23/2026]

[needsaparrot]

The last time Xander missed a really important call, he'd had no other excuse than not hearing the ringtone over his hometown falling into a sinkhole around his ears

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[time_flyer_5]

Jen did not look happy when she walked into the common room, a circumstance that had nothing to do with any ridiculous layovers since she'd remained firmly in this particular pocket of the future since returning from the Ice Age.

She'd been paging back through her Ranger history records and noticed a glaring lack of . . . several people, really, including the entire Aquitian Ranger team, but mostly Wes Collins and Eric Myers's complete nonexistence.

At the moment she was chalking it up to someone hacking her files, and was trying to figure out who to have look into the situation, when she caught sight of Xander.

"What's going on?"

[needsaparrot]

Xander stared blankly at her for a moment, then just said, "Mel called," and let the voicemail play.

[time_flyer_5]

Jen listened to the voicemail with a cop's impartial attention to det--

Okay, she started to, but by the time the message was over she wasn't even pretending to do that any more.

"Oh, god, Xander." She could've started asking questions, or trying to draw correlations, but she wasn't that much of a hardass cop that she couldn't give him some time.

[needsaparrot]

Xander let out a short huff of air through his nose. Listening to that again hadn't been any easier than the first time, even though he knew what was coming. "I've thought she was dead before; you think you'd get used to that kind of thing after a while, but no."

[time_flyer_5]

Jen shook her head. "That sounds a little too deliberate to be a false alarm though, doesn't it? And --" Something clicked.

"The Ranger archives. People have started disappearing from those records, too." She glanced at him, corners of her mouth set into a slight frown.

[needsaparrot]

"Because that's comp--" Forgive Xander if he was a little slow on the uptake at the moment. "What do you mean by disappearing?"

[time_flyer_5]

"As in there's no record of them having been there in the first place," Jen clarified. "Or even having existed."

Which was how Mel's message said things had started, wasn't it?

[needsaparrot]

"She said people and places were gone." A few more moments and he might stop looking for a wall to punch that wouldn't break his hand, and apply that to-- "You think it might be happening here too?"

[time_flyer_5]

"It might be," Jen said slowly. "Anything you haven't heard lately?"

[needsaparrot]

"Haven't heard?" Dumbass... "Well, I haven't heard from any of my construction clients this week. I know it's Thanksgiving and all, but the little green guy with the coffee fetish was calling me every damn day to check on one detail or another, before."

[time_flyer_5]

You could argue that Jen just naturally erred on the side of pessimistic. You could.

"Doesn't make sense for him to suddenly stop. Any more than it does for Wes and Eric to just stop existing in the past, without affecting now."

[needsaparrot]

"Maybe that just hasn't caught up with us yet?" Blame a couple Galaxy Quest episodes and Issue 294 of Bitterwoman Unlimited that he could even try to fake a guess about temporal physics. "There's your uplifting thought for the day..."

[time_flyer_5]

"Twenty-five years later it hasn't caught up to us?" Jen did look kind of sorry to be pointing that out, at least. "This is more than a little bit crazy."