5674/Time Keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin'...

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Time Keeps On Slippin', Slippin', Slippin'...
Date of Scene: 22 March 2021
Location: Main Room - Titan's Tower
Synopsis: Sushi and talk of the future in the main lounge.
Cast of Characters: Kian, Terry O'Neil, Gar Logan, Irie West




Kian has posed:
    Kían the Studious.
    That might be a good nickname for him, since when he's not flying or otherwise engaged, that's what he's doing: studying.
    Say, for example, right now, at a desk next to one of the large windows… and papers all over the place with, upon close inspection, notes in both English and Akiár'shak, and in some cases notes in English written boustrophedonically—weaving back and forth, reversing direction at the margins of the page—and calculations done in Arabic numerals, but in base 8.
    The birdman is on one of his "dammit, I'm going to understand this aspect of Earth!" binges.  Previous ones have met with only varying degrees of success.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "Did you know," Vorpal's voice comes over Kian's shoulder, "that the Ancient Greeks had a goddess of wisdom, Athena, whose representative animal was a bird?  An owl!"
    As Vorpal approaches Kian, he extends a hand and a great horned owl appears to perch on his arm.  "Although by how often you are studying, I think we might do a write-in petition to have them replace it with you!" he says with a big grin, and sits on the desk (yes, on it), with enough room for Kian's material, but enough room to sit comfortably.  Cats can do that remarkably well until it's time to expand onto your territory.  "I saw Carol today!" he adds, in a non-sequitur.

Kian has posed:
    "c'Rhys'yw, no!" Kían says with feeling.  "No gods or goddesses, I had enough trouble trying to keep the priests at home from making my a rhyták, I do not need to be associated wit' an Eart' god as well!"
    He grins, and sets his studies aside, and rests his hand on Terry's leg by way of greeting.  Judging by the mental feel that brings on, he's relieved to have an excuse to put his current project aside.  "Did you?  How iss she?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    The Cheshire returns the gesture by putting his hand on Kian's.  "Oh, she's doing great.  She asked me about Colette's Doppelganger, apparently she met her on the moon!  But then we got to talking about how it was your anniversary of your arrival, and she said she'd swing by the tower to celebrate it with you!" he grins.
    "Gar's getting some food, but he should be along fairly soon.  Mom made a ton of roast beef sandwiches for a stake-out that didn't happen, and we got the whole bulk of it.  You should try them… she cooks wonderfully."

Kian has posed:
    "I will haf to try that.  I know beef iss okay for me to eat," Kían says, "an' I woul' like to see Cap'tain Mar'fel again.  The las' time was when she came to tell us you had fallen into a black hole.  Which I am glad was not as final as that normally iss."
    He glances at his papers.  "Strange you shoul' mention anniversary, I was tryin' to make sense of your calendar.  I haf not yet succeeded."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "That's because it doesn't make sense, Kian," Terry says, reaching over to stroke Kian's hair with a mischievous grin.  "I could get you a book about the history of our calendar.  None of it makes sense, religion has a lot to do with it as well as some pompous emperors who were worshipped as gods."
    The cat leans back on the desk and grins.  "You know… more material to convince you Earth is totally not insane."

Gar Logan has posed:
    The elevator dings, heralding a stop at this floor.  When it opens, out steps a magnificent 10-point buck.  A very, very green 10-point buck.  There is a large plastic bag hanging from each antler, hooked over one after the other so they don't fall.  It can only be Gar.
    "Yo, could one of you be a deer and help a guy out?  All this sushi is making my neck sore!" he calls over before musing, "Never mind.  I've got the deer part covered, but give me a hand anyway.  I've got California Rolls, Philly Rolls, Dragon Rolls, mixed fish, crab and shrimp, eel, a bunch of nigiri, gyoza, salad, edamame, tofu, yakitori, tempura…."  He keeps going.  Best to just help him get it unloaded.

Kian has posed:
    Maybe it says something about how accustomed to not just Earth but the Titans that Kían has become that a green bag-bearing buck coming out of the elevator just doesn't surprise him—in fact, he flits over to provide the requested assistance.
    Also, sushi—he has learned to appreciate this particular Earth food.
    "You did not go into the store in this shape, did you, Gar?  …no, you very probably could haf, now that I think about it."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "He probably did, Kian.  Remember, our Gar is famous and one of the most popular Titans on Social Media."  Vorpal grins and slides off the desk to help with the bags.  "And that's saying something when you consider that one of us is a cat and, technically speaking, should own the internet by now.  Alright, Bambi, we've got the bags, you can change back now," he says.

Gar Logan has posed:
    "I don't give away my techniques," the animal says.  Once the bags are unloaded, his form flows back into the Beast Boy they know and love, clad in his costume as he rises fluidly from more of an all-fours position, rolling his neck this way and that.  "Also, this isn't the surprise," he tells Vorpal before looking around the room.
    Spotting some of what Kian's got laid out, he asks, "Been studying, huh?  Hey, there are some phone apps out there that can help teach you language stuff, too.  They'll say words, tell you what they mean, use them in a sentence… heck, if you wanted to, you could probably even learn, uh, Tibetan.  In case you ever feel like becoming a monk."  He starts arranging some of the containers, sorting them by appetizer, type of sushi, and so on.

Kian has posed:
    Kían looks inquisitively at Terry.  "Bam-bi?" he repeats, then shakes his head.  "No, never min', I haf a feelin' you will only confuse me.  Which you often do to me wit'out even tryin'."
    And then Gar gets an inquisitive look.  "I haf been tryin' to understan' your calendar.  Which like everythin' else on Eart' does not make sense."  Again, he shakes his head.  "An' I am not even goin' to ask what a 'fone app' iss."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "Baby steps, Gar, baby steps.  Let's not introduce him to phone apps until he's cried over Bambi's mother—have you no notion of cultural assimilation?"  He also pinches Gar's butt.  This is his punishment for the constant teasing about the surprise—because Vorpal has his own way of teasing back.
    "Bambi is an animated movie.  It's fairly old, but it's something a lot of children watch when they're little.  It has a lot of emotional moments, and a lot of cute moments too, right Gar?"

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan clasps his behind after squirming away from Vorpal, leveling him with a raised brow.  "You're lucky I don't go 'Flower' on you," he retorts with a snort, kicking out a leg in what else but a comical way at the cat.  "Yeah, it's cute but it's also sad in places, too."
    Hands rest at his hips, so he might consider Kian with a scrutinizing look.  "Calendar, huh?  Okay.  How many months have twenty-eight days in them?"  Pop quiz time!

Kian has posed:
    Kían has the look of someone mentally calculating—which he is, converting twenty-eight to base eight.  "All of them, but mos' haf more," he answers quite seriously.  "An' your movies confuse me.  They all assume so much Eart' culture an' I am still figurin' that out.  I think if I show you an Akiár program, even if you spoke the language, it woul' not make sense all the way to you."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    Vorpal proceeds to lay the sushi out like the most luxurious banquet, carefully unpacking them from the bags.  "I am sure there are some things that you could glean.  I am sure there must be some bare universal things.  Now… these animated movies are a little older and from a point before movies and cartoons started including references to popular culture, so they tend to be a bit more universal and more enduring.  Funny how that works, right?" he says, grabbing plates.  "So we could make it a date night and watch Bambi, and then you can give us a presentation on whether or not you understood any of it!"

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan snaps his fingers.  "You got it, but that's what we call a trick question or a play on words, like a logic puzzle," he says to Kian.  "If you're not thinking, you might say 'Well, February's the only month,' but yeah.  It's all of them.  You don't even have to do any math or converting from a calendar you know."
    He sneaks a piece of gyoza for himself while finishing laying that out, with a few of the other appetizers spread around with them.  "Of course our shows and movies are made for our cultures.  Whatever's on your world wouldn't have references we'd understand if we'd never heard of them before.  And Vorpal, you'd be surprised.  Even the old stuff had little things in there for the time that people would get.  But if you ever go back and watch the old cartoons, look at how much classical music they had in them that we got familiar with, too."

Kian has posed:
    Kían nabs himself a selection of edibles—sushi is at least familiar to him, there's a similar dish on his world—and fairly inhales an eel roll.  "An' that iss another point.  Your music uses a differen' scale than ours.  It soun's like half the notes are missin'."  He shrugs.  "Maybe I can show you somethin' from our worl', min' to min'.  You woul' haf the advantage of havin' my understandin' of it, or maybe it woul' make no sense anyway.  I do not know."
    He shrugs, and a tuna nigiri disappears.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "Well, unless you have perfect recall, wouldn't we be watching a memory of what you saw?  That's already watching things through a bit of a distorted lens, in a way.  There is a game that we play called telephone—where people whisper a message from one to the other, and the fun is seeing how distorted the final message at the end is, compared to the original."
    Vorpal doesn't reach for sushi for now.  He's still a bit full from his mother's sandwiches.  "Humans tend to have unreliable memories.  We've found details fade over time and only the broad strokes remain, from which we reconstruct our reminiscense.  Do Akiar minds work differently?"

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan grabs a small plate and sets aside a selection of different pieces, getting some soy sauce, wasabi, and ginger to go with it before sending word to the rest of the Tower that there's grub to grab.  "Music has a lot of different styles and scales and times, Kian.  But sure, we could try that sometime.  I guess that's the only way you can really do it here, right?"
    There's a nod to Vorpal over the phone game, and he gives the feline a Cheshire-like grin.  "Yeah, I've already forgotten the last time I surprised you."  There's that word again.

Irie West has posed:
    There's a streak of white and blue, and the crackle of electricity and suddenly Irie is standing in the kitchen, peering inside the fridge.  She's wearing a pair of blue jeans and a white t-shirt emblazoned with Nirvana's cross-eyed smiley face, and her thick coppery hair is tied back into pigtails.  She hums to herself as she picks out a strawberry flavored snacky shake and turns to run back up to her room, but stops when she sees that there are other Titans lounging about here.
    She walks up to them and cracks open the shake.  "Hi guys!  Mind if I join you?"  She peers down suspiciously at the sushi.  "What's this?"

Kian has posed:
    Kían waggles a tuna nigiri at Terry.  "You forget that we haf the min'-gift.  I can turn my min' in on itse'f.  I do not haf perfec' memory, but it makes it easier to get at them, at leas' when I concentrate.  But you are correc', you woul' get it filter by my view of it.  Which iss not an Eart' view, so it woul' still be alien."
    He turns, and bows slightly towards Irie.  "Oh, kié!  Gar has brought food."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "Come, eat, join us and be merry—wait, Irie.  Are you telling me…" and here the Cheshire's voice acquires an undertone of dread, "…that there is no sushi in the future?  Oh what dreadful, doleful, doomed destiny is this that dastardly drapes o'er us all?  This future must be changed!"
    The Cheshire gives Gar the hairy eye—and a quick Rabbit Hole means that the green Titan gets another pinch.  "Just you wait, Garfield Logan, just you wait.  Keep teasing me like that and you'll see the lion that awakens!  Kian, Gar is being positively impossible.  Isn't there anything you could do, like… a tiny zap?" he asks, obviously joking.

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan pauses with a piece of a Philly roll just about popped into his mouth.  It slips out, and he barely catches it before it lands on the floor.  Chances are that wouldn't deter him from eating it anyway.
    The pinch ensures that of happening, as he jumps briefly in place, then picks it back up with the quickness before turning a lighter shade of green as he stares at Irie, not Vorpal.  "What horror of a future exists that there is no more sushi?  My friends, we have a new mission in life and that is to ensure the safety of sushi now and forever!"  He slams a fist against his chest triumphantly, then opens his hand with the realization that had the piece of food in it.
    Looking around at them, he merely shrugs his shoulders and shoves it in his mouth.  "We'll try that sometime soon, Kian," he adds, the words a bit muffled as he chews.  The asked-for threat doesn't seem to bother him in light of Irie's revelation.

Irie West has posed:
    Irie leans a little closer to the little rolls of rice and seaweed.  "Oh, so that's what sushi looks like?"  She wrinkles her nose.  "I always thought it would be squirming or something."  She looks up at the assembled Titans and solemnly informs them, "Yes.  Sushi was outlawed in 2031 after the Atlanteans started complaining about it."  She tries very hard to keep a straight face, and manages it for maybe thirty seconds before she breaks down into giggles.
    "No, I love my mom and dad, but our meals didn't tend to be very adventurous," she explains plopping herself down on one of the couches.  "And we spent most of our lives either going on adventures or recovering from said adventures so I didn't get out much."

Kian has posed:
    Kían watches Gar and Terry's distressed reactions, and Irie's explanation, and is not enlightened much.  "I do not know if you are having fun with them," he says to her, "or if it iss true an' you think it iss a very silly law."
    He shrugs and goes after another eel roll… and a California roll or two.  "Maybe if we haf foun' my worl' by then, we can haf shorán imported.  It iss very similar.  We coul' trade chocolate for it."
    Kían is at least thinking ahead.

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "If only we could find a way to get to your world…" the Cheshire says, reaching into the fridge for some iced tea, "Although if we did, you'd probably never want to come back, and we'd miss you.  And you'd miss not being able to complain about how nothing makes sense.  Right, Gar?"
    He walks over and sits on the couch.  "Sounds like you had a pretty high-flying adventurous life, Irie.  How old were you when you started having adventures?"

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan begins to take it like Irie's tale is not fishy at all, then he goes fishy—to that hybrid form he learned while he was healing from the damage his doppelganger did.  It's some sort of mix of human and an underwater creature such as one from the Black Lagoon, only in this case it manages to look… adorable?  "I'll go to Atlantis!  I'll swim there as soon as we're done and talk to Aquaman or Garth or whoever!  I'll… wait, what?"  Solid eyes, a deep pool of black, widen then blink a few times.  "…oh.  You got me."
    A quick revert back to normal leaves him shaking his head, distraction present as he squints at Vorpal and Kian.  "Right, yeah."  Whatever they were talking about.  Of course. He'll just… nom on some gyoza for now.

Irie West has posed:
    Irie lets out an audible gasp and turns to Kian.  "You guys don't have chocolate on your world?"  This is a very dire circumstance, indeed.  She turns to Gar and Terry.  "Guys.  We've got to find Kian's home world now.  They don't have chocolate."
    She leans over the selection of sushi and pokes at one of the eel rolls experimentally.  "Um, after our first age up," she responds to Terry's question.  "So that would have been about two years in?  We would have been seven?  Eight? physically."  She eventually decides to pick it up and pop it into her mouth, and chews slowly.  "Hey," she declares, "this sushi stuff isn't so bad!"

Kian has posed:
    Kían shakes his head once.  "I think I woul' not stay there for long before I got bored an' came back, Terry tavárik'h.  I seem to haf got use to this worl'.  You are probably stuck wit' me now," he says with a bit of a grin.  "I woul' be gettin' studied all the time, or worse I woul' be made rhyták an' have to oversee rites all the time."
    He shrugs at Irie.  "No, no chocolate on our worl's.  I coul' nearly buy my way into the Imperial family by importin' it, I think…."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "But then you'd probably have to deal with being an imperial, and I can't imagine you as a glorified bureaucrat anymore than I can see you as a daredevil, Kian."  Vorpal smirks, and then glances at Irie.  "The raising of speedsters seems to be… I mean, Bart told me about the whole simulator thing, but I am still a little confused.  But I guess it means it takes some time to understand the Speed Thing, you know?"
    He drapes himself over the couch and closes his eyes.  "You know, it would be super comfortable if someone made a lap for me to rest my head on," he says, clearly teasing Gar or Kian.  For a few seconds, he struggles with the notion of making tea—sipping while lying down workable, but he gives up.  Laying down wins.
    "You've been in this time for a little while now, Irie.  What do you think of walking among us old remnants of the past, these dinosaurs in tights?  Do you have to walk around while suppressing the urge to burst into a knowledge-delivering monologue about how things are going to work out and thus change the future?"

Gar Logan has posed:
    Gar Logan finishes with his 'pregame' snack, fully intending on scarfing down more fish and such once a few others have had a chance to partake.  He grows quieter as questions relating to being a Speedster are asked, allowing them to be answered without interruption.
    "I'll bet it would," he remarks after Vorpal seeks a victim for him to play sprawling cat on, but he heads over that way to assume the position, patting his lap.  "Go on.  And I hope I can see your world sometime, Kian.  Wait until they get a load of me," he finishes by pulling off an authentic Jack Nicholson impression from some movie of his.  "We'll bring lots of chocolate."

Irie West has posed:
    "Speed Force," Irie says, correcting Terry.  "The problem with it is that nobody really understands it.  I mean, we know some of what it does, but how it interacts with things like time and relativity and stuff…."  She trails off shrugging.  "Who knows?"
    At Terry's last questions she just shakes her head.  "It's kind of amazing, really.  You're all legends, and getting to see it all beginning and being here and maybe becoming part of it is really super exciting."  She sighs.  "It's hard, though, yeah to keep myself from saying things that'll spoil stuff.  I don't know if half the things I do is going to change the timeline or not, so I'm trying not to worry about it."  She grins, and takes a look at the selection of sushi, picking up a California roll and pops it into her mouth.  "I mean.  I figure that the timeline is like a rubber band stretched tight.  You can poke at it a little bit and it'll just bend with whatever you do, but poke at it too hard and it'll snap."  She grins mischievously.  "It's why I can say things like, 'The sequel to Cats was actually better than the original' or 'who knew Madonna was going to make a comeback in her 70s' and it won't break the timeline."  Her eyes crinkle in delight.  "That and you'll never know if I'm telling you the truth or just pulling your leg."

Kian has posed:
    Kían just stares at Irie for a moment.  "Ai, no.  I do not wan' to be a legen'.  All I wan' to do here iss jus' be help-ful.  Legen's are only jus' barely this side of myths, an' myths do not exis'.  An' I am fairly sure I exis'."
    He considers the rest of what she has to say.  What he gets out of it is this: "Why woul' you pull my leg?"

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "Kiiiiian… I hate to break the news to you, but you are in a team with a woman who came from an island of myths with her sister.  And I'm very much a modern equivalent of that in the popular consciousness, so… maybe you might need to revise your theory!"  Vorpal accomodates himself, resting his head on Gar's lap and looking up at him, winking.  "…hello, handsome."
    "Madonna is always making comebacks.  And Cher.  To be honest at this point I wouldn't be surprised if in the next thirty years Lady Gaga becomes the empress of the solar system or something of the like.  All hail Gaga!"  He grins and closes his eyes, stretching and stifling a yawn.  "I won't say no to winning lottery numbers, however.  Interships at the Planet don't pay a lot, and I've got a hungry mouth to support," he says, gently prodding Gar's side, conveniently not mentioning that Gar is the adopted son of the fifth wealthiest man in the world, and doesn't need to be supported.

Gar Logan has posed:
    "Dude, no Gray's Sports Almanac stuff," Gar says in a hushed tone to the catboy.  "And as much as I believe Madonna ain't done yet, I don't want to know any future stuff unless it's like a matter of life and death and we have to do something to, I dunno, make sure I don't turn into a douchebag," he explains to Irie.
    Shooting Vorpal a look at the poke, he decides to be merciless.  Both hands, both ears, deep rubbing.  "Still not the surprise."

Irie West has posed:
    Irie rolls her eyes, "Don't even get me started on Lady Gaga."  Kian's question causes her to consider the intent behind pulling somebody's leg.  "I don't mean literally.  I mean… I guess… it's joking around with people."  She doesn't sound too convinced though.
    "But, yeah.  Sometimes being helpful in the right place at the right time can make all the difference in the world," she says, this time selecting a salmon nagiri from the plate.  "Do that enough times and you become a legend."  She pops the nagiri in her mouth and chews slowly.  "Hm.  Weird."

Kian has posed:
    "They can not be myths since they are real," Kían says pedantically, and then shrugs.  "Well.  Logically, if I am a legen' in the future, that means that I stay here, at leas' a while.  An' that I do not get myse'f killed doin' somethin' crazy, at leas' not any time soon."
    He takes up a perch on the end of the couch.  "So, that iss good news, I suppose.  But I do not wan' to know details about the future either.  I woul' be too temp-ted to try to change it if I did not like what was comin'.  An' while I haf not studied much time physics, I know it gets very crazy very easily."

Terry O'Neil has posed:
    "Tsk tsk, Kian.  You are so wary about getting crazy…" Vorpal mumbles, eyes closed and happily enjoys Gar rubbing his ears.
    "After all, we're all mad here…."