The Beach, Friday Afternoon

[reicicled]

Okay, so Bobby had thought the fish was kind of funny when he and Paris had first won it, but now? After two nights of having to endure its incessant singing?

(Not to mention his roommate's complaints about same)

He'd had enough.

Even encasing it in a block of ice hadn't done much except muffle the sound of the Beastie Boys somewhat.

So he'd hauled the damn thing, still encased in that block of ice, down to the beach and was attempting to set it adrift in the ocean.

Only problem was it kept coming back.

Maybe it was the tide, maybe it was something more nefarious. Either way, it was super annoying.

[ooc: for them what knows who they are, first, but also potentially open!]

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[intraspective]

Ino was mostly out because it was a nice day to be out and she was feeling restless, still, though she'd been in a bit of a better mood since talking to her boss. Things weren't right, not yet, but they were more solid than they'd been for a bit.

More solid… much like that… block of ice.

Ino shaded her eyes with one hand and squinted. Curiosity got the better of her, so she wandered closer.

"What are you doing?" she asked the kid.

The muffled sound of the fish caught her attention.

"Is that The Fish?!"

[reicicled]

"Yes," Bobby grumbled. "Unfortunately." A sigh. "I'm trying to get rid of it, but it keeps coming back."

He turned around to face Ino as he spoke, which... speaking of faces, the one now looking back at her would be a familiar, if somewhat younger than she'd remember, one.

[intraspective]

Which, wow, if anything was going to side track her from the fish, it was going to be that.

"What, no--" Ino blinked in surprise. "Bobby?!"

He was so tiny! So wee!

"Are you meant to be tiny?" she asked, since that was an important question. "Or are you suffering from Fandom or other small-inducing entities?"

[reicicled]

"Yes?" Bobby gaped at her for a second. "I mean, no, I'm not suffering from anything, except maybe this fish, and I'm not tiny."

You kind of were, Bobby. At least compared with your older self. Older selves. Whatever.

[intraspective]

"You're super tiny," Ino insisted, smiling. "But that answer says you're meant to be tiny--so, hey, guess what? You won't be tiny for always!"

She was trying to be reassuring? Sort of?

A beat.

"And I can fix the fish suffering issue."

Fiiish. She wanted the fish!

[reicicled]

Except now he was looking at her with suspicion, because why would she want that fish?

Ignore the fact that he'd wanted that fish a mere two days ago.

"First.. how do you know my name?" he asked instead. He figured it was because she knew an older him, but was it the older him that had been here, or the older him that was back home?

[intraspective]

If all else failed, she was going to grab that block of ice and try to run off with it.

He didn't want it! That meant it was free for the taking.

"'Cause I knew a less tiny you," she said easily. "Were that not obvious?"

[reicicled]

"Oh, no, trust me, that's plenty obvious. But like, which one?"

By his last count, there were four.

[intraspective]

Ino thought about that.

"I don't know?" she said. "I mean, we went to school together? But I went off island for, like, five years and change and if a bunch of others showed up during that time I wouldn't know?"

[reicicled]

"That actually answers it pretty well," Bobby said. "The other ones are all either back in my own reality, or other people's realities. I just wasn't sure if you meant the one who was here or if you had some versions of me back where you're from."

Yes, that was plural.

[intraspective]

Ino paused.

"...how many of you are there?" she asked, wondering if maybe she shouldn't.

[reicicled]

"That I know of?" Bobby said. "Well, there's the me here. And then there's the older me back home. And the older me who was a student here. And then the older me that Jono knows, and the me who's my age that Jono knows. And the older me that Kitty knows. And if her reality goes the same way mine did, pretty soon she'll meet a younger me there, too."

And that wasn't even counting the Ice-Hulk or Frost Wizard versions of himself from even further in the future.

Wasn't time travel delightful?

[intraspective]

No, no it wasn't. Even if she wasn't adverse to using it to her own advantage.

"Imagine if you all got together and compared notes," she said, blinking a little.

That was... a lot of Bobbys.

[reicicled]

"That'd either be really funny or really terrifying," Bobby admitted. "It was weird enough constantly bumping in to me-but-older back home, but we got used to it after a while."

[intraspective]

"How does that even work? Having two of you in the same universe for real?" she wondered. "I've got two Renos in my world right now, but only one belongs there--the other's a transplant from a different version of his world."

Ino had gotten sidetracked from the fish--it was nice to talk to Bobby again, even if it was a different Bobby--but she hadn't forgotten it.

[reicicled]

"Time travel," Bobby said. "A future version of one of my friends came back to my time and said he needed our help in the future. Which is the present, actually, now, I guess," ugh time travel was confusing sometimes. "And then we just kind of got... stuck." Which you'd think would break the timeline, but. Nope.