fandomtownies | Trooper Station, Friday

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Trooper Station, Friday

Liam was in a good mood as he made his way in to the station today. Yesterday's lunch with Dominic out in Baltimore had actually gone... pretty smoothly?

(Probably because Liam had definitely let him win the game of chess they'd played over said lunch.)

As soon as he walked in to the station, though, he was greeted by a shout from Ralph of "THE FLOOR IS LAVA!" Instinctively, he looked down, because this was Fandom and you never knew.

"Sir, you're gonna die of lava if you don't find something to stand on," Ralph informed him solemnly, from his perch on Calvin's desk. "Here," he kicked the chair over to the doorway.

Liam just gave Ralph, and then the chair, a Look before sitting down and scooting the chair over to his office. Apparently today was just going to be Like That.

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Who had two green thumbs and a minor problem with raccoons?

... Yeah. This guy. Right here.

"Hey," Fjord said, peering into the station. "Who does a guy need to talk to in order to report raccoons trying to sell my own damn liquor back to me?"

You know. The bottles that had run off last time he'd been in here.

"I wish I could say I'm surprised," Liam said with a sigh. "And yet."

At least the floor was not currently lava, Fjord? Liam wasn't exactly sure of the rules, to be honest, but at some indeterminate point, the Troopers had collectively decided that the floor was safe again.

Then at another, equally indeterminate point, Calvin had declared the floor to be made of lava. And then consensus had been reached that it was, once again, no longer so.

For now.

"And yet," Fjord replied. "I'm honestly waiting for the point they all just flat-out corner me in a dark alleyway and try to shake me down for platinum."

Not that Fjord had platinum. But paper money was just weird. It was hard for him to entirely accept that it had any real worth, here.

"I'll have a talk wi-"

"THE FLOOR IS LAVA!" Shouted Ralph.

Liam drew his legs up in his desk chair until was sitting cross-legged, feet off the floor. "You're going to want to find something to stand or sit on that's not the floor," he informed Fjord, sounding rather resigned.

Fjord cast a very speculative look at the floor. And then at Liam. And then at the troopers.

"... Why is that, exactly?"

Because it was lava, buddy. You were dying. It was horrible. Tragic, even.

"Because-" Liam started to say.

"The floor is lava!" Chorused all the Troopers currently in the station. From their perches on various desks, chairs, or in Calvin's case, on top of a pile of papers he'd dumped out of a file folder he'd been holding.

Fjord was giving them all such a strange side-eye. He hadn't ever really played this game as a kid, no.

He hadn't played many games at all as a kid, really.

"Uh, right," he replied, and then kind of sidestepped a little and made a reach for an unoccupied chair, sitting himself into it. "... Better?"

Did you hear that audible sigh of relief coming from Calvin? Definitely better, Fjord.

"I don't really get it either," Liam admitted. "It's some kind of game? I think?" Because so far the floor had not actually turned to lava, although... Fandom. He wouldn't put it past the place to do that out of spite for not playing along.

"That's, ah... a mighty strange game," Fjord noted, side-eyeing the troopers for a few moments more, and then shaking his head and looking back at Liam. "But I suppose there's no accounting for other people's ideas of fun."

"And it's pretty harmless. So far." Aside from irritating Rosa, but then... there weren't a lot of things the Troopers got up to that didn't irritate Rosa, so.

"So far," Fjord agreed. "Knowing this place, I suppose it's only a matter of time before that changes."

He'd be impressed if the chairs could withstand actual lava, though.

Not to mention that island of papers Calvin was standing on. "Honestly, that's most of the reason why I'm playing along," Liam admitted.

"I imagine we'll have bigger problems than whether or not we're sitting in chairs if the floor actually does become lava," Fjord noted. "But I suppose at least the troopers will be marginally less stressed about it before we all inevitably die burning."

Never let it be said that Fjord was an optimist.

"That's... one way to look at it," Liam acknowledged. He wasn't wrong, but it was an awfully dark observation.

Sorry, Liam. Warlock. He was only going to get worse as he levelled up.

Fjord shrugged, almost apologetically.

"Or we can just go on under the assumption that it's a silly game," he amended.

"Probably for the best, that way," Liam agreed.

"Better for everyone's sanity, at least."

Experimentally, Fjord lowered one foot to touch down on the floor again. Sitting with his knees up in a rolling office chair was not his idea of a great time.

"Nooooo!" one of the Troopers cried out in dismay.

Sorry, Fjord, apparently you're stuck there for a little while yet.

And, with a sigh, Fjord brought his foot back up onto the chair.

"Was worth a shot."

Kaidan was about to take a cloaked ship through a portal. He thought it might be prudent to let Liam know. Incoming text.

"If you get reports of a UFO over the island, I'd give it 50/50 it's me taking a cloaked ship through a portal or an actual UFO. Heading homeward for an overnighter."

It seemed like half the island's population owned spacecraft, Liam himself included. So chances of anyone reporting something in the sky as unusual were... low.

Still, Liam appreciated the heads-up.

More trouble?

"Nah, not this time," Kaidan texted back, "Or: that's not the plan for this time. Heading home to visit a friend, get out of my own head for a bit."

Look, Kaidan put nothing past the Bee Lady, Liam. You'd told him stories of her and her weefee issues.

Gotcha. Liam replied. Have fun, then. Try to stay out of too much trouble.

Because asking him to stay out of trouble entirely was out of the question, intended purpose of the trip or no.

"Gonna try. Bringing supercargo with me, hoping for a boring ride and some quality downtime," he answered.

And here was Rosa, scooting across the floor in her own chair, toward Liam's desk, looking very much how you'd expect her to look when was scooting across the floor in her own chair and she wasn't hopped up on sizzurp or competing with one of the troopers over who could stay in their chair the longest, which was definitely a competition she'd had before, and she didn't lose it, either, thank you very much.

"I need to you to sign this," she said, handing over folder with a few pieces of official looking papers in it. "It's my full on investigative report into exactly why the floor is not lava, so we can officially close this case and I can stand up without Ralph losing his mind. Also, maybe we should take him to the clinic. I have a theory."

"Oh, the floor totally isn't lava any more," Ralph announced casually. The rest of the Troopers still in the station all nodded in agreement.

"... Do I still need to sign this?" Liam asked Rosa.

For the record, the floor would absolutely be lava again in about ten minutes or so.

"You better hope it's not," said Rosa, shooting an all-too familiar glare straight at him with her expert marksman precision, "or else I'll be throwing your asses all straight into it."

Such loving coworker relationships around here, really.

Rosa's attention honed back in on Liam with a very precise, very firm, very insistent, "Yes."

Because it would be very crucial and important evidence in her next report on how the floor was absolutely not lava this time, either.

Your tax dollars, Fandom Island, hard at work!

... Did Fandom even have tax dollars? There were budgets, certainly, but how would one even collect taxes from a population as varied as Fandom's?

"Okay, okay," Liam said obligingly, looking over the aforementioned report with all the seriousness it merited.

Either way, it was obviously money very well spent.

"Thanks, boss."

And the report was surprisingly well-written and concise and she didn't even refer to the troopers as dumdums or morons once! It was actually kind of nice to throw herself into something technical that couldn't be argued with, not to mention the sweet pleasure derived from getting them on a matter of paperwork, the thing they themselves always tried to turn against her.

She was particularly proud of the whole 'if the floor was lava, then our desks and chairs would not protect us' defense.

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Trooper Station, Friday

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