4339/Reunions with cats and clownettes

Reunions with cats and clownettes
Date of Scene:	07 December 2020
Location:	April's Apartment
Synopsis:	The cats come for a visit on Harley after Terry was away for ages! Flashlights, talks of nature, lil lions, smuggling booze for drunkard Akians ... It has it all!
Cast of Characters:	Terry O'Neil, Harley Quinn, Gar Logan

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Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Really, she's not -that- bad, Gar!" Terry O'Neil says as he and his boyfriend head over to the door leading to April's apartment. It had been a busy two days- what with the misisng Titans crashing into the tower, and then Terry doing the rounds to let people close to him know that he was back. The media had not yet been notified of the return... Terry was more or less trying to see if he was fired fired at the Planet, or if he was assumed missing like many others were in the aftermath of the Warworld invasion.

Yesterday they had dropped by April's, but Harl was out- and the next detour took them pretty much the rest of the day when Gar and Terry made it to Terry's mom's place. There had been tears, there had been laughs, there had been lectures and maternal guilt-tripping about hiding secret identities (which she had figured out a while back anyways), and then she had taken them out for ice cream and more conversation until the late hours of the night. At which point Terry and Gar stayed over in Terry's old, embarrassing, superhero memento-laden high-school era room. His old bed squeaked like the dickens at any movement, so absolutely nothing happened because otherwise Terry would never hear the end of it.

This morning, they rounded back up to April's apartment in the hopes of catching Harley, "And besides, she likes you. It's not just anyone who'll give your boyfriend a diamond-encrusted whatsit for your enjoyment, you know," he says with a wink, and rings the buzzer.

"I wonder if Ivy is visiting. Then you could make jokes about having a green thumb in common."

Harley Quinn has posed:
There is no pillow fort this time around, but there's been a torrent of messages sent once Harley got news that Terry might be back. Talk about having contacts with the Titans! And being allowed as far as the lobby! She has Shorty (aka Damian) to thank for that! So there's been an assault on Terry's phone. At least on his old number.

The buzzing on the door has Harley perk up though, and instead of using April's new SUPER SECURITY system she does what any normal clownette would do.

Ask her hyena to go check the door. "Go on Lou! Ya can open it!" She has an excuse to not go to the door too. Watching a re-run of Dawson's Creek! She needs to catchup to the season where her turtle friend is at afterall!

But it's when the hyena starts scratching and bumping it's head on the door that Harley gets up to her feet. "Heh?" she cants her head to the side, almost as if she could understand what the hyena is 'saying'.

The sound of footsteps rushing to the door is heard, locks opening and then a clownette on PJs is visible. "VORPS!" *insert clownette tossing herself at an unsuspecting Terry*

Gar Logan has posed:
A very eventful few days, but enough that some things were beginning to feel normal again for Gar the Green, of the Titans. His friends were back, he'd started to catch up on things with Terry, and there were some very odd guests around as well. Just another day in the life.

"Even if she /does/ like me, she's insane in the brain," he stage-whispers to Terry as they get closer, quoting the classic 90s song. "How do you know she won't just haul off one day and do something, you know, /Harley/ to us?" Then again, there are a lot of things Harley Quinn can do that don't necessarily involve violence and death. Some of them may even be worse than violence and death. Gar struggling to trust her has been a /thing/ for a while now.

"And that diamond thing was an abomination, and you know it," he adds, just before sounds from the other side of the door lead to more sounds, which then results in /her/ appearance and subsequent attack of Terry, which Gar helpfully avoids by taking a few steps back. "Hey, Harley," he says, playing the role of Switzerland for the time being.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Sometimes you have to take that leap, hon. Harl's trying to walk a better road, but she won't get far if there's nobody supporting her," Terry whispers back, rubbing Gar's shoulder. "I know it makes you nervous- think about it as part of being a hero. Sometimes helping people takes subtler methods than pulling them from flaming wreckages- sometimes it's just about being there for so-"

As the door opens, the redhead is /not/ prepared for the Harley Trampoline routine. In hindsight, he really should have been, but he's been gone for three months and the insanity experienced in the black hole was a different flavor than the one his clownette friend usually serves up.

"Oof- Harl! It's so good to see you!" He hugs back, doing his best not to topple over- "I'm alive! We came by- with food!"

Precariously stuffed in his satchel was a container of Agatha O'Neil's famous Penne All'Arrabiata, which she had prepared to send back with the boys. 'Go ahead and take it, I've made too much of it anyways-' Agatha had said, in the tones of mothers everywhere. The recipe was spicy, incredibly tasty, and had a totally unorthodox addition of whiskey to it.

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Where have ya been?! Tell me all! Awhe theah souvenirs? Did ya get space cooties? Awhe ya a near perfect robot replica o' my friend?!" Clearly Harley has been watching too much sci-fi. And rather doubtful quality movies considering the questions ... The Trampoline routine is followed by the Hug routine. It's a classic really, and she isn't really saving on the strength so it's a bear hug in the true definition of the term. But eveeeentually she does set Terry down, peeking over. "Gar!" she grins deviously. "Oooh, I like yoh smile. I hope ya've put my gift ta good use these last few days." Harley knows how reunions like these go!

"I didn't even touch yoh WW stuff ya said I could have. All still in yoh room!" She then says, eyes back on Terry. The wide grin then shifts to a frown. "Nevah scare me again like that!" she says, "A video sayin' you could be dead... Gah!"

Meanwhile the hyenas have gathered too, yelping and jumping up, clearly infected with Harley's excitement. And more than that they can SMELL the food. They have their own excitement going on too! "Oh, food...?" she appearing to finally stop to listen to what Terry is saying. "Come in! Tell me aaaaaallll. We have time. Apes ain't heah. Probably out with Crazy Casey oh somethin'. I dunno! I ain't stalkin' her oh anythin'!"

Gar Logan has posed:
Yep, that is definitely her. Gar's smile is a little more forced than usual, and he had no time to respond further to Terry before Hurricane Harley was upon the redhead. He remains outside the storm's reach, at least for now, and he pawns off her mention of the 'gift' as best he can. "Something like that, yeah."

There wasn't much time to come up with something better, see.

He casts a glance Terry's way, also giving the hyenas a fairly wide berth. He could become one if he so chose, but turning into anything they might see as a predator to /them/ maybe wouldn't be the best course of action if the idea here is to leave the apartment in one piece. Fortunately, there is an opening Harley provides.

"Oh, ahhh, I don't know if you heard, but he kindasorta got evicted while he was missing. That wasn't very fun," he explains. "We saved the most important stuff. I think."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
WHen Bud and Lou make their appearance, Terry quips "Looks like the gang's all here- Hey guys!" Once Harley has bear hugged him and he has responded with a breathless 'oof' (he shouldn't be surprised that someone capable of acrobatic feats is strong), he extracts the tupperware container and offers it to Harley "Here ya go. Straight from mom's kitchen. It's worth its weight in gold." It was not uncommon for Terry to manage to get some favors here and there in the past through his mom's recipes. It was a blow to the gastronomic world that her vocation made her more prone to sit in cars to do stakeouts than organizing stake-outs in the kitchen. But their loss was Terry's gain.

"Souvenirs? You betcha I brought you a gift, actually. Let's go in and I'll tell you all!" As they go into the familiar surroundings of April's apartment, he takes out a thing that is very much cylindrical, wrapped hastily in gift-wrap paper. "Now I know what this looks like but trust me, it isn't!" He says, handing it over to Harley. "It's a flashlight." He pauses. He knows Harley. "With an 'a'. It does the craziest thing... go ahead and point it at something."

Endovar's famous light. Its properties, strange as they are, are that it will show the way things aren't. And thus, for example, a bottle of liquid might suddenly appear to be a solid wooden block, but it is only appearance. It does not seem to work on living creatures, "It has one hell of a story behind it."

Harley Quinn has posed:
Harley takes the precious tupperware with both hands once the hugging is done with (for now), lifting up above the hyena's reach. "Back inside, boys! And don't even think on attackin' this food oh else it's bed time for ya with no tv foh a week!" the hyenas whimper, as if for some reason they could understand her, or maybe it's all in the tone. Regardless, the trip inside the apartment goes without incident.

"Yes! A gift!" Damn right she is excited. But priorities! She quickly goes to the kitchen to start heating it up for them to nom before returning, blinking at the flashlight.. She takes it, turning it around her fingertips and pointing it towards Gar first (of course). But then she hears it doesn't work on living creatures. Boo! So she turns it to one of her baseball bats in the corner!

She finally seems to make sense of Gar's words, "Wait, ya got kicked out o' yoh house?! What the fuck? Who do I need ta talk to?" Clearly Harley talking with Terry's landlord would really help his case.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan rubs at one of his ears in thought, before his hands go up when she points the flashlight at him. "Don't shoot!" he quips, before he squints at the baseball bat as the light causes it to look like...something different. "That's..it? What good is that?" he questions. If Terry has a story to tell, best he get to telling it.

The hands remain up, only waving back and forth now. "No, Harley, no. You don't need to talk to anybody. He was missing to the public, and nobody paid the rent he was owed. A lot of landlords are snakes, but what else can you do when someone's gone and not paying rent, and nobody else is covering it? No going after the landlord. Besides, we've got a plan."

His grin is sudden, almost Joker-esque.

"Terry's gonna be my French Maid."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Reaching the same conclusion as Gar, Terry is quick to interject, "Yeah, no need to talk to 'em... I did miss three months of rent, and since I've been three months out of a working paycheck, I can't really afford to pay it back. Or this month's rent, at that," he shrugs, "I'll probably just couch surf for a couple of months until my sitch is back in order... and Gar and Colette saved most of my stuff, so it's all right!"

The smell of the Penne is alluring, and Terry's stomach growls, but he feels he needs to dignify Gar's quip with a stony glare before saying "Garfield Logan. You are dead wrong."

As he starts heading towards the kitchen, he adds "I'd be an /Irish/ maid."

"Believe it or not, that flaslight saved us. Serve us up some food and I'll tell you the whole tale of it, leaving nothing out!"

As he sits down, Gar can hear him mutter 'French maid, indeed...'

Harley Quinn has posed:
"I got a friend ..." Harley starts, clearly not yet convinced that she doesn't need to intervene, "... she wants me ta go rob a bank. And well, I sorta did already.. Technically. Apes was theah too! We robbed it togetha!" ok ..., that sounds like a story.. But it's not one she goes too deep into, "We could get yoh money in no time!" she frowning at the injustice of landlords.

Yet the uses of the flashlight are giving her ideas, specially as she starts to ihihihih, and ehehehehe. Creepy little clownette laughs. Oh yes, she has ideas..

"French maid though?" A grin. "Hold!" and she runs into her room a moment. When she comes out she has, yes, a french maid outfit there. "I was usin' it befoouh when I sorta messed April's apartment. Ya can have it!" she looking at Terry a moment. "We ain't that differently built. Yoh will fit!" and then she runs off to the kitchen.. The food is almost heated up.

"Ya know, yoh friends in the towah awhe a bit weird." this coming from a crazy clown, "They like hugs a lot apparently!" a moment later she adds, "Come heah to the kitchen ta eat." she is already getting plates down all in preparation for the foods!

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan squints at the bat, which now looks like a balloon, but he goes over to poke at it and it certainly feels like the bat it is. Shaking his head, he leaves it be to instead deal with the reactions and responses. "French, Irish, it does no' matter. Ye'll be gettin' paid, boyo."

Then he rubs his face with a hand. If Terry is paying attention to Gar's tells, this one is universal. "Harley," he tries to say with as much patience as he can manage, "if you're trying to be good, you can't go back to robbing banks, and you definitely can't be getting April caught up in any of that stuff. Terry's not paying rent with stolen money, period."

Terry, this is why Gar has reservations.

The serious moment fades when she actually returns with what she does, offering it to Terry. "Yeah, I think it's your size," he offers, so helpfully. The mention of hugs leaves him arching a brow. "Dare I ask who was hugging you?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Of course Harley has a French Maid's outfit. He takes it with the resignation of one who knows Gar is going to get him to wear it, and to fight fate at this point is the endeavor of the foolish. "All I'm sayin', Gar, is that just you wait til you see what I have /you/ wear."

"... you're going to have to tell me more about this bank thing later!" Terry says, putting the French Maid outfit on the couch next to his satchel. April hadn't mentioned /that/ when they saw each other yesterday. Now he could go back and ask for the tea. He knows April, so he knows the story is probably very complicated, confusing, and somehow the outcome was inevitable. What usually tends to happen to April.

There really was something about his faily.

"Alright, yer worship, but don' expect me to be polishin' yer shillelaugh as part of me obligations. I'm a good lad from Donegal born and raised, innocent to yer wicked ways."

And with that, Terry hops into the kitchen with a smirk. "And as to the identity of the huggers? Totes Robin. That kid is just a bundle of love."

"So that flashlight kinda helped us get back. We were trying to fly through a White Hole, but we couldn't even see our instruments, it twas so blinding bright. I flashed that baby at the screen and WHAM, no more blinding light and we could get through. Funny how it all worked out... of course, it was sort of pre-arranged."

He sits down at the table and takes a deep breath, "So... once upon at time..."

Terry launches into the backstory of that absolutely insane place- about how a seemingly impossible pocket universe housed seven planets that orbited a singularity, against all possible laws of physics. About how people from all societies, planets, and points in history, ended up in that universe and how the legend of the pirate Endovar and his ship, the Beating Heart, had shaped a great deal of the settled colonies there.

Everybody had accepted that nobody could ever find the way back, save through a White Hole, which remained hidden... and so the wanderers ended up settling on the seven planets- each planet was some crazy person's answer to the question of 'How do we solve the problem of society?'

"When we first arrived, we were greeted by this old coot called the Gatekeeper, in this tiny world called Gateway. Apparently everybody who got there came there first..."

On Gateway is where they learned of the legend of Endovar and received several artefacts belonging to the legendary pirate as tokens from Gatekeeper... Terry's flashlight included.

"So it became obvious to us that we needed to find clues to locate the Beating Heart and try to find where the hell the White Hole was hidden. There were... oh god. The first planet we visited basically was dedicated to something called 'fisk'- some sort of clout you got by being able to spew sophistic, grandiloquent intellectual bullshit. Basically the entire planet was a Thesis Review Board."

This might give Harl some flashbacks to her Doctorate years, "I tried to play the game but went nowhere fast. Then Caitlin basically implied that she could bench-press the bozos withut thinking and suddenly we got answers FAST. This is what we now call 'Going Full Caitlin', by the way," he grins at Harley. "We sort of... we really wanted to come back. So we kind of sowed chaos across the seven planets. There was a world where your social status was reset every day randomly, so you could go to bed a pauper and wake up the king. Cait got Queen For A Day so that made things /very/ easy on that planet... but man..." he shakes his head...

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Shorty?!" Harley just laughs it out, amused and shaking her head, "That one ain't a hugga. But he *was* heah some days ago." a beat. "Along with Batman." her eyes going a bit wide and she shuddering. "Really..., this is turnin' ta be the nexus o' time and space alright.." April's apartment. The hottest place in New York. "And nah, it was Karolina! And her friend, uh.. Angel? Angelica? Somethin' like that!" a grin on her lips. "I also met the birdie. Which remindds me, befoouh ya leave I got a bottle of the finest Brooklyn moonshine foh ya ta bring ta him."

The talk about the outfit just has her looking wickedly between them, clearly pleased that her gift was well taken. She still points the flashlight here and there in the kitchen, the hyenas going wild as they are getting confused with all the weird items appearing. But eventually the play has to stop, the food is heated up and so she begins serving it up, settling down to listen to Terry's tale.

"I still gotta catchup with Caitlin, my pen pal." she laughing. "I can imagine how it is, a full Caitlin." she yaks out like a hyena, "It sounds like a full-on adventure, and I missed it! This cannot be!" she complains, but she is still laughing.

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan only gets a mischievous look on his face when Terry responds in such an Irish way. That's it, for now.

That's because it's story time.

Once it's over with, he shakes his head. "Dude, it's almost like you were transported to the End of Time and met Gaspar, then you got cool stuff from Spekkio. All this time we're wondering if we'd ever see you again, and you're off doing weird things on different planets and societies?" The whole idea that the people were stuck there because they had no way of escaping? It's not exactly lost on him. "If you guys were able to get out, I wonder if anyone else will."

He watches the hyenas trying to figure out why things look like other things then look normal again, but he gets a little quieter for the time being. Food helps cause that, but so does a lot of thinking.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
"Yeah, well, cool stuff is overrated when there's a little green guy you're missing like the dickens. Don't get me wrong, being one of the first four humans from Earth's history to /ever/ set foot inside a singularity is cool... but it would have been much cooler if we weren't in constant fear that they were right and there /was/ no way back, right?" Terry reaches over and brushes Gar's chin with his fingers before turning back to Harley, "Oh, Karolina is the greatest---- but the Batman was /here/? Man. What's next, Superman bringing cupcakes?"

At that, he stares at the window just in case... but nothing.

"That wasn't the craziest planet, though. There was this one where they had resolved that conflict was the driving force behind progress, so they created a society of perpetual war and rules of 'civilized warfare'. Not a lot of casualties, but... a whole bunch of idiocy. For all their 'civilized' approach, they had created machines that gave one side advantage over the other. People were assigned sides to the battle based on arbitrarily-assigned forehead tattoos... Donna did /not/ like that one bit and went full Amazon on them. Long story short? By the end of the day we basically altered their social system, stopped an eternal war, destroyed the machine that gave the advantage, and tampered with the electronic tatoo one so that /everybody/ on their planet..." and here his eyes grow full of mischief "... ended up with a cat's butt tatooed on their forehead so that nobody knew whose side they were on. Then we destroyed the machine."

He leans back on his chair and grins wider still. "Then there was this planet where lying was outlawed via brain conditioning. But we had to find a way around it to make someone tell a lie in order to get us access to information on finding Endovar's hideouts. The craziest planet of them all, though, was actually twin planets. They both were called Gombar... but one plant had chosen the path of art, the other of science, and they were so brainwashed that they refussed to acknowledge the existence of each other..."

He rolls his eyes, "You should have seen Donna. She was exasperated ninety percent of the time."

Harley Quinn has posed:
Fine. Harley buys it. She *also* looks to the window. There could be a wild Superman there! But nothing... She lets out a sigh. "Ya got my hopes up.." what? Superman is sexy as hell! Her eyes do go back to Terry and Gar again quickly enough and she looks a bit more serious, sober. "Regardless, I am real glad you are back." she reaches over to place a hand on Terry's shoulder and squeezes it. "Hope you guys awhe able ta catch up on everythin' and find that happiness ya deserve."

The tale about the cat butt tatoo on foreheads has her laughing out again, sputtering some food out. "Really? What the heck! So ya saved, like, seven planets oh so?" eyes then going to Gar, "But it's like Gar says. IF ya got out, couldn't moouh o' them follow ya?"

A pause, "How did ya get 'em to lie if they couldn't?" she is curious on that one.

Gar Logan has posed:
"Hmm? Stop, dude." Gar is distracted from looking at something on his phone, the more Terry tells the story, turning away from the attempt to touch his chin. "I'm looking for something."

Scroll, scroll, tab, tab, so on and so forth. Batman, Superman, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man..they could all be outside the window right this moment and he wouldn't notice.

"Heh. Cat butt tattoos," he remarks. "And Donna's exasperated by anything she can't just punch, I think. I've seen Cait go full Cait before, too." He's still not all there, due to his phone search. "Ah."

Pointing to the screen, he says, "Check it out. I didn't understand any of this back then, but some of us went to Themyscira and came back with a prophecy. All of a sudden it's making a hell of a lot more sense."

He reads from the screen:

"FOUR FRIENDS LIVE BENEATH A BROKEN SKY.
A RIDDLE NEVER SPOKEN BE SOLVED, ERE THEY MAY RETURN
THE MOST NOBLE KNEEL BEFORE THE LEAST, ERE THEY MAY RETURN
AN UNBELIEVABLE LIE BE BELIEVED BY ALL, ERE THEY MAY RETURN
ENDLESS WAR ENDED FOREVER, ERE THEY MAY RETURN
UNSEEN BELOW BE SEEN ABOVE, ERE THEY MAY RETURN
STONE MUST SMILE, LIGHT BECOME DARK, AND UNSEEN LABYRINTH THREADED,
BEFORE YOU MAY FIND THEM AGAIN."

No yelling, just reading. "Raven said something about having to wait for you guys to do something, otherwise I think she was just gonna try to find you herself. But this is creepy. And here I thought you guys were alive just because nobody else I knew who was related to you got all catty."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry stops cold in his tracks, and at every point of the Prophecy after the first line, Terry interjects a name, such as "Gombar" or "Nim", detailing each one of the planets those challenges were found. "And the last one.. that's how we got out... holy shit. You guys went to THEMYSCIRA?" his eyes are wide, "Oh man. I would have given ANYTHING... to go to Themyscira!" his voice is full of wonder, and longing- it is no secret who it is that is Terry's heroine. "Oh man... and you guys bothered the gods to speak an oracle about us? I think I'm going to cry now."

He grins, "Well... how we got the lie to happen- if you were a member of the planet, you had to undergo this neurological retooling where you basically closed your eyes visibly if you were lying. So everybody in the world had a 'tell', so to speak, by which you could tell liars. Anyone who didn't choose to partake in the reprogramming was relegated to the 'city of liars.' Once we knew what the tell was, we just needed to find a way to make it look like the person in question wasn't closing his eyes..." he trails off, and whistles. "We... may have sorta rigged an election that way? But it was okay because both candidates were along the same - well-intentioned with different opinions, so.... yeah..." he clears his throat.

"As fo the way back... I don't think they can follow us. See, the 'tone that smiles' was the asteroid that Endovar's lasts base was in. It had a huge carving of his face... and guess what? The face looked like the Gatekeeper back in Gateway, so the bastard was there all the time... but more on that later. To get to open, you needed one of the artefacts- a special spacetime transponder- to transmit the words "Open Sesame" to it. Only then the mouth would open. And then there was the white hole... nobody could navigate that without the use of-" he points at Harley's flashlight "That. Then the rest? Welll, the white hole dumped us into hyperspace, and we were /lost/. The thread that helped find the exit to that maze was..." he points at Beast Boy "The telepathic probe that the Titans set up at the edge of hyperspace. And I was the only one of the team who picked up the telepathic signals. We used the probe to navigate to the exit. Anyone else that tries to get out of there... is facing very bad odds."

He ponders for a second. "Endovar left a message for us at the white hole. Apparently he knew who we were, and he said that he was actually the CREATOR of that place. All of it was an experiment to test his theory that people, when separated from their cultures' histories, would form a working society. In some parts, it worked... Gar, there were Warzoon and Akiar and many other races just friendly as could be, side by side. But Endovar also said that they had strayed and that he hoped that our passage through their worlds would help reset them back into a semblance of sanity..."

He glances at Harley "So... I guess we got used? Sort of?"

He smiles at Gar, "Hey... give yourself credit, Gar. You are the only one who picked up on the fact that, if I were dead, then there would be another Cheshire Cat... and that it could only be /two/ people as long as my two closest relatives were alive." He smiles at Harley, "But yeah... now we catch up. There's so much to catch up. And I've been thinking... about going fully public. No more hiding my identity."

Harley Quinn has posed:
The reveal of the prophecy has Harley peek in-between bites. She blinks a few times. That does sound rather familiar with parts of the tale so far, it then confirmed by Terry's reactions.. "Ah! Give it ta the amazons ta pull somethin' like that! That was a full fledged on adventure...! Even worthy of a prophecy..!"

She leans forward, regarding Terry a bit more seriously. "Do you feel yohself full o' new experiences? A new look on life?" she questions..

With more details given about the adventure, including on how they used the lantern, makes Harley pick it up again, flashing it on their food a few times. Thankfully nothing gross appears instead. "Well, people formed theah own societies instead. Theah is no such thing as perfection anywheah. That reset..? Seems ta me it will only woik foh a while. We all have ouuh natures in the end.." she shrugs, almost as if that was an obvious thing for her.

When Terry speaks about revealing his identity she hrms. "Well..., secret identities awhe overrated anyway! Foh me at least who has noone that people can threaten that's close ta me." and because she'd probably hunt down and kill any that would threaten those she cared for.. There's that too!

"You.., you got family, Terry." She furrows her brows. "How ya thinkin' on managin' that?"

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan's eyes shift between Harley and the maid-to-be, aka Terry, aka Vorpal, as he pauses in the recitation of the prophesy as told by the oracle, more and more of it hitting spot on as Terry confirms each part. "Crazy. I didn't think that stuff actually worked. And I wasn't there. You know they don't let guys in. But..yeah, the met with the oracle, or an oracle, or Larry Ellison, or I don't know. I guess he wouldn't have been there either. But look. All that stuff? Craaaazy."

He takes the rest of the explanation as for why nobody else was likely to get out and nods slowly, shaking his head a few times. "I don't know how I'd have held up with all of that to deal with. And even after all that..I guess Raven would have found you somehow, but I'm glad the beacon worked. But..what'd you say? There were /Akiar/ there? Have you told Kian?" That? It definitely surprises him.

"Weird as it may be for me to say this, I find myself agreeing with you, Harley. If they already started falling apart there, it's probably gonna happen again eventually. Nobody really changes what they are. Even people are just another type of animal, and we're ruled by our own natures too."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry sticks out his tongue, "Nature shmature. If it were true that people couldn't change," he taps Gar's chest with an index finger, playfully, "Both of us would still be avoiding facing how we feel about each other. We can't, like, competely /remake/ ourselves, but we can certainly compensate for our failings. That's why we're Homo Sapiens- we use tools to complement the areas in which we are lacking."

Turning back to face Harley, he shrugs, "You can say I've got a new pespective. I am not taking anyone or anything for granted. Not anymore. There's nothing like going on an Oddyssey to change your point of view... and I am glad it was only three months and not twenty years. I've spoken with mom and April, andd they both agree that they'd be in no more danger than they were before, what with April being... April," he waves at the apartment that has become Grand Chaos Central, "and mom being a successful PI who has helped put away her fair share of crooks. Before, I was Terry, a reporter who was friends with the Titans... which means anyone wanting to get back at the Titans would go after me anyways. So... I just gotta face Lois now and see if that means I can stay working for the Planet or not... and what I a going to do if it means I can't, y'know?"

He then glances at Gar and says, with a rather significant smile, "I haven't spoken to Kian, love. Don't worry... I'll let him know when we have that talk with him."

What /that/ is all about, who knows?

"Raven... would have come after us. She told Donna as much in dreams. But that would have been bad. She would have had to use all of her power. Much of which... she doesn't dare tap, you know, because You-Know-Who. If Raven had come for us, it might have meant risking the end of the world as we know it because of what might have come in her wake. That's why we were so desperate to get back."

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Learn and adapt." Harley says in agreement with Terry, at least when her mouth isn't full of food, "But a reset sorta goes against it. But heck, regardless, hope they find some measure o' balance." and now that she is finally satisfied with her food she leans back on her chair, hands resting on her stuffed belly.

"Is that the goth?" This about Raven. She has heard of her at least! "I ain't seen her at the towah. She might had been hidin' from me! What's this all about endin' the world..?" she furrows her brows..

But her focus in the end goes to /that/ talk. Oooo. Harley latches on to it like a .., facehugger? "Ok, theah's somethin' ya ain't tellin' me. What's ya talkin' about? Spill the beans!" clearly she isn't going to take no for an answer!

Gar Logan has posed:
Gar Logan knows a lot about nature and instinct, in his estimation, so whatever the others might think in opposition to that, he lets them rather than getting into a big debate about it here. Not really the place or time. However, after the finger poke, he at least tells Terry, "That's not a nature thing. That was us being awkward."

There is a lingering look at the reply that includes Kian and a talk with him, but instead of saying anything about that he latches on to something else. "Right after you all disappeared, I had a dream with you in it too. It felt like it was really you, but I don't think it could have been. We can't do the soul stuff Raven does, and trust me. I've been around her enough to know whatever you think she's capable of, you've hardly seen anything yet."

When Harley pushes for details, he digs out his phone again and feigns an excuse. "Oh, look. I have to go get my nails done in a few minutes!"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
Terry chuckles, "Well, yeah, she's the goth. She tends to stay in her room a lot. She's very on-brand." Talk of the end of the world is mercifully avoided by the spicy news. "Oh... nothing big. Gar found out that he could take on the shape of Kian's folk, and so they both engaged in some heavy telepathy and grew very close. I figured I should have a chat with him since I saw one of his people back in that black hole... and I want to see how my bequest for him to give Raven a certain book of poems went!"

He has NO idea.

"Thanks for heating up the food, Harl-- I'm afraid we do need to be going for now. Gotta see if I can swing by the Planet and pick Lois' brain. And Little Gar Fauntleroy here needs to get his manicure done."

He stands up and gives Harley a hug- "But I propose a pizza party this weekend, get everyone together. I want to do that 'cause I am not dead, I missed pizza, and I missed you guys."

Walking over to Gar's chair, he leans down to kiss him on his cheek and says "Come on, little lion We gotta vamoose."

Harley Quinn has posed:
"Oooo, telepathy..." Harley perks up a bit at that, blinking a couple of times, "So .., ya touched minds..?" give it to Harley to make it sound lewd. But she is grinning, popping up to her feet. "Well, betta take that bottle so I don't forget.." she goes searching around the kitchen, reaching into a cupboard, "Heah.." and she hands the bottle over to Terry and Gar, "That one's foh Kian." no label, nothing. A clear liquid. Strong stuff most likely! And all very clandestine as it should be.

"Good that ya guys dropped in!" She then replies to Terry when they start saying their goodbyes, offering each a hug if they will take it. Like a puppy the earlier excitement has made her tired so she isn't as franctic as earlier. More appeased and at peace to have been able to have a talk with her friend after such a long time apart.

"Pizza party sounds great! Count me in."

Gar Logan has posed:
"Yeah, we..well, they..that's one of their abilities," Gar says of the Akiar, and surprisingly enough there is no blush from that stuff being alluded to.

He lets Terry claim the bottle, though it's given a look of scrutiny. He hides the phone before anyone can see what was really on it or not, and the peck at his cheek brings with it the beginnings of a grin before he freezes.

Little lion? Did Terry just call him little lion, like from the first dream?

"Uh, yeah. Sorry. We gotta run." He accepts the hug in the briefest of ways, then upon turning around he stubs his toe against the edge of the sofa. "Motherf..rrrgh! Why did I stop wearing shoes?" he blurts, hopping on his good foot for a few seconds before he limps forward and just turns into something that can fly instead, a cockatiel, to land on Terry's shoulder.

Little wounded lion, huh?